seven-per-cent
by AngelicSentinel
Summary: Ran finds out at the worst possible time Shinichi is Conan. Now she's got to break them both out of the Black Organisation's lab, and time is running out.
1. R E T U R N

**Title** : _seven-percent_  
 **Fandom:** _Detective Conan_  
 **Author** : AngelicSentinel  
 **Rating:** Teen  
 **Relationships** : Kudou Shinichi/Mouri Ran  
 **Warnings:** Canon-typical violence, Identity Reveal, Injury, Imprisonment, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Unethical Experimentation  
 **Summary** : Ran finds out at the worst possible time Shinichi is Conan. Now she's got to break them both out of the Black Organisation's lab, but time is running out.

* * *

Ran's shaking. The cell is rough and damp and cold; she thinks a pipe's broken somewhere, she hears the sound of dripping water, it puddles at her knees. Shinichi lies in her lap, unconscious, body fever hot, tossing and turning and clutching at his chest. She holds him close, pulls as much of him as she can up to her knees to keep him out of the water, arms around his chest, patting his hair, whispering soothing words in his ear. His shoulder is a mess of bandages and blood, and he's breathing hard, and shaking as well, and they've taken away anything of hers that could be used to help him.

Two men; one with cold, cold eyes and long silver hair and a laugh made from pain, another with sunglasses and a square chin and a large frame blocking off the end of the alley as they turned from leaving the restaurant. Ran closes her eyes for a long moment, the scene flitting in front of her eyes, clear as day: Shinichi steps in front of her, ever protective, hand outstretched and touching her arm as she steps closer behind him, almost touching him but not quite, bringing her arms up as she keeps the two in her view.

There's an exchange of words she can barely hear over the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. Silver-hair (why does he look so _familiar_?) pulls out a gun and trains it on Shinichi. Ran's moving before she can blink, before she can even think, she kicks it out of his hands and down into the gutter with a precise aim, pulls her arms close, her feet shoulder-width apart, ready for anything. He lunges at her, but she's not a karate champion for nothing, and she ducks between his reach and punches his solar plexus as hard as she can, causing him to grunt. He's winded but he reaches for her hair and misses; she brings her foot around and kicks him in the head, knocking him down to his knees, and then again in the temple. He goes out like a light.

One down, one to go. Shinichi hasn't been idle; he's kicked the thug's gun out of his hand using a bottle, but the man's advanced on him, backing him up to the wall, and he has no more ammunition at his feet. Ran sees red but she knows anger is her enemy; she takes a deep breath and then she's closing the space between them as fast as she can, punching the man in the sunglasses.

He's deceptively quick, and her fist cracks the wall. She turns, but it's already too late. He has his gun to Shinichi's head. Shinichi's starting to sweat, his teeth clenched. He staggers a couple of feet forward, hand over his heart. "Not now!" she hears him mutter under his breath, a trace of fear like she's never heard in his voice. The gun follows him.

"Heh, sorry Ran," he says. "Don't worry, I'll get us out of this," he says with a confident grin.

Ran doesn't believe him. How can she? He looks like he's about to keel over at any second. She takes a deep breath, centers herself. She has to find a way out of this.

That's enough for the man to jab the gun at his head. Shinichi winces. "Him or me, girlie. What's it gonna be?" he says.

"You know as well as I do it's going to be both of us," Ran says quietly. "I could get you, but not before you shot him." She's quick, but not that quick. If Shinichi were well enough to dodge...but he's barely keeping himself standing.

"Ran, you need to go," Shinichi says, and he pants, falls to his hands and knees. At first Ran thinks it's a feint, waits for him to sweep the man's legs out from under him so she can act and get them both out of there, but nothing.

"Not without you," Ran says, shaking her head. It's a stand-off. One way or another, it's not going to end well. She doesn't see a way out of this.

"Bro," the man says, and she whirls to see the other one with silver hair wipe blood from his lip, then stagger to his feet.

"Stupid bitch," he says.

"Bro?" Square-chin and sunglasses says.

He grins wickedly. "We can use her. Stop messing around and get 'em both." He turns; Ran uses that time to kick his legs out from under him, only for square-chin to shoot Shinichi. Shinichi lets out a cry, falling to the ground, breath coming even faster now as blood spills from his shoulder.

Ran instantly freezes. "That's better," she hears from silver hair, then he pistol-whips her in the face, and she knows no more.

She wakes cold and freezing and half-naked in the same cell as Shinichi. It's damp and feels like it's underground, close to the water. There's an incessant drip that's easily ignored at first, but the longer she sits, the louder it grows. She's barefoot, in nothing but the thin lacy camisole she was wearing under her blouse and a pair of shorts; even her bra has been taken away. She desperately hopes it wasn't those two men. Ran shudders at the idea of them touching her.

Shinichi's in front of her. She kneels down and shakes and shakes and shakes and shakes him, but he doesn't wake. They've stripped him too, leaving him in nothing but jeans and a bandage around his shoulder. He's burning up, but the fact that he's sweating gives her a little bit of hope. If she just had something she could use the dripping water to cool his head, but she doesn't, so she pulls him into her lap to keep him from the water and strokes his hair.

"Shinichi," she says, "please wake up. _Please_." She can't stop her voice from catching.

Ran doesn't know how long she kneels there, her legs falling asleep from the cold stone, and Shinichi's weight, the iron bars of the dimly lit prison cold sentinels.

And then Shinichi lets out a gasp, and things go from bad to worse.


	2. R E V E A L

Ran holds Shinichi tighter to her chest as he lets out a guttural cry. His eyelids are fluttering; his eyes have rolled into the back of his head. He starts convulsing, one hand clutching so tightly to his heart it's breaking skin. She loosens her own grip; she's well-aware restraining someone seizing can lead to injury on both their parts. There's nothing around his neck, small favors, but that doesn't lessen the fact that something is deadly wrong with him.

Her mind runs through the symptoms of poisoning; the food? No, thinking back, the onset happened before they reached the restaurant; she'd dismissed it as fatigue, or the heat of the day—he was sweating even then, and short of breath.

She can't do anything but watch him as he spasms, body jerking as if channelling electric shock. She'd ring 119 but they took her phone, and anything else she tried would probably hurt him more than help.

Ran wrings her hands, tears coming unbidden to her face. She bites her lip hard, trying to keep them back, but it's no use. They stream down her face as Shinichi seizes again and again, body contorting. His movement tears the wound on his shoulder open, blood drips down to her thighs, coating her shorts and legs and smearing with her movements. She immediately puts pressure on the wound with the palms of her hands; she's got nothing else to use. A tear falls down her face, splashing against Shinichi's cheek.

He stills, shuddering still.

The pressure of her hands must jolt Shinichi to awareness as his eyes fly open. "Ran…" he forces out, voice hoarse.

"Shinichi!" she says, keeping her hands in place to staunch the blood flow. "Shinichi! Stay with me!"

"Ran," he says again, voice weaker. "You're... here." He sounds almost surprised. And a little disoriented, like he's unsure where here is. He's still shaking, aftermath sending tremors through his body, still clutching at his heart, his other hand blindly grabbing at her and holding her wrist.

"Of course I am, silly," Ran says, her hands covered in his blood. She leans down and wipes her nose on her arm, sniffing, keeping steady pressure on his wound. "Where else would I be?"

"Ran, I— _Ah,_ " he begins, but screams in pain. He stiffens, his body white-hot, turns on his side and out of her lap, body curling in on itself. She kneels beside him, keeping pressure on his wound as he shakes.

Then, a curious thing. He twitches; suddenly, his body is _shrinking_. She stares, and blinks, and blinks again, rubs at her eyes with the knuckles of one bloody hand. The vision in front of her doesn't change. His screams of pain echo through the empty room. Her hands—she feels the movement, feels the loss of mass underneath her fingertips, and then there's a bleeding child laying beside her curled in on himself, howling in pain before going deathly still, swimming in bandages and too-large jeans.

Conan. That's Conan. She was—she was kidding. She thought, but she never _thought_ —Ran can't breathe, her heart thudding in her chest as a wave of memories washes over her. The hospital. The phones. The gunshot. Their blood type. It's crazy, but the proof is right in front of her eyes.

She knows Conan looks exactly like Shinichi did as a child. Mannerisms, love of detective work and Holmes. She's suspected, but...things don't work like that out in the real world. Her heart leaps in her throat, as she thinks back to the night Conan showed up.

Tropical Land, where Shinichi disappeared. Two men on the roller coaster, too suspicious, though they weren't the murderers. Both in black, one with silver hair and cold eyes and one in sunglasses with a square chin. A flash of silver hair by the docks; Conan next to a dead woman. Conan putting gum on the train on the way to the wedding, her scolding him as two men in black return to their seats, and his desperate need to tell her something, bomb discovered only later. So many scenes flashing in front of eyes it makes her dizzy.

People don't just shrink. People don't deage. But Shinichi just did, which means they _do._ Ran can't breathe, arms tingling, body going numb. The dim cell flickers in and out before her eyes; she feels faint.

She doesn't know how long she sits there in a daze before a soft cry from below brings her back to herself. She glances down.

Conan's—no, _Shinichi's—_ wound has come unpacked from the shifting of his skin, and with his seizure earlier and his smaller frame, blood is pouring from his shoulder. Without the bandages to keep it compressed and his smaller body, Shinichi could very well bleed to death. That's not counting whatever the transformation has done to his body.

And she's sitting in a daze just letting it happen. Like **hell**. She takes a deep breath, centering herself, and moves Shinichi, maneuvering around so she can repack his wound and rewrap the bandages. She would prefer it if they were clean but needs must. Though they said they needed them both alive, she can't depend on their goodwill.

Her mind races. It's not too late. She has to get Shinichi to a doctor. She has to find a way out of here.

When she finishes rewrapping them, she pulls Shinichi into her lap, doing the best she can to preserve his modesty. He's so small like this. He can't weigh more than thirty kilograms, and even that is a generous estimate considering how feather-boned he is. The more she thinks about it, the more it makes sense. Shinichi has always been fearless, and Conan is no different. She shakes her head. Conan _is_ Shinichi.

Her arms cradle him easily enough, and she tucks him against her chest, as safe as she can make him. Her eyes flicker from wall to wall of the white cinderblock cell. Four cameras just outside the cell, two trained on the door, covering the other.

The architecture looks old, and she's broken many a cinderblock in her karate training. If they haven't packed the holes with mortar—

"Well, well, well. What have we here?"


	3. R E G R E T

Ran looks up.

A curtain of blonde hair, a curvaceous figure, cool blue eyes, red red lips, stained the color of blood.

Immediately, she clutches Co—Shinichi to her chest, wrenching him away from the bars of the prison and turning her body so he's as much out of the line of her sight as possible.

"Well," the woman in black says again, one hand on her hip. "Aren't you a little guardian angel?" she says, baring her teeth. It's nothing close to a smile, sharp like the teeth of a tiger.

Ran's heart hammers in her chest, a sharp spike of adrenaline coursing through her body. She keeps her eyes trained on the new threat. She breathes steadily, forcing herself to remain calm, the energy ready if she needs it. She glares, pours murder into that one look, but keeps quiet.

"Nothing to say, Angel?" the woman asks, and Ran says nothing still. A thousand questions buzz in her mind, chief among them, 'Who are you?' 'What do you people want with us?' but they're pointless. Ran has seen this play out a thousand different times in a thousand different ways on a thousand different cases, and they all end in a body bag. If they're going to die—and by god, she's going to fight like hell to keep that from happening, but it's better to be prepared—then she's going to go as nobly as anyone would. Stoically, fighting to protect her friends.

Unconsciously, she tightens her grip on Shinichi and he lets out a small whimper of pain. Her grip loosens and her eyes leave the woman, falling down to the boy in her arms. Shinichi reaches out, weakly, eyelids flickering like he's waking up. She wraps her hand around his—and how is it she never really realized how small his hands were like this—and tucks her other arm against his side, under his injured shoulder cradling his head against her neck. His blue jeans swallow him whole. He'd fit in one leg and there would still be room to spare. "Ran," he says, and then he blinks, squeezing her hand, feeling the size difference, eyes wide, "Sis?"

"Shinichi," she can't help but whisper to reassure him, her eyes tearing up again. She gives him a gentle kiss on the forehead, and he marvels at her, his face nothing short of astonished. Ran wants to reassure him, to confess, to _something_ , but before either she or he can say anything, the woman interrupts.

"How touching!" The woman says.

Shinichi jerks in her arms, turning to look at the woman. "Vermouth!" he hisses. Ran's not surprised he knows more of what's going on than she does. He knows who those two men are, too. Shinichi _is_ Conan, and she's starting to suspect these people had something to do with his change.

"You've gone and gotten yourself caught. Now what am I supposed to do with you?" the woman, Vermouth, tsks, shaking her head. She snaps her fingers and makes a "come here" gesture. Two women in white coats come forward just from out of sight. Ran shifts Shinichi, letting go of his hand, settling him so he's more balanced. His grip tightens on her; his face doesn't show anything, but Ran knows he's ready to move with her.

Vermouth unlocks the cell.

Before she's even cracked the door more than two centimeters, Ran is already up, kicking one of the lab coats in the throat, savage and not at all inclined to mercy. Lab coat #1 crumples, but before lab coat #2 can react, she's at the cell door, putting all the weight of her shoulder into Vermouth's chest. The woman falls back, hits her head against the wall.

Ran runs down the hall, footsteps echoing through the dull white halls. The fluorescent lights flicker as she ducks down one hall, then another. They all look the same. The hair on the back of Ran's neck rises as she's reminded of every horror movie she's hid her face through. Only this is no movie, and the killers are still coming for her in a relentless pursuit.

Shinichi is steadily growing heavier, and she still hasn't found a way out. The narrow halls are a maze, deliberately designed to confuse.

"Ran," he says, noticing her growing fatigue. "You're going to have to leave me behind. I'm slowing you down."

"No!" she says, panting, but the word near explodes out of her mouth. "I'm not leaving you behind!"

"You have to!" Shinichi urges. "I don't care what happens to me as long as you're safe."

"But you won't be!"

"Ran—"

"No! I had to watch you disappear once. I'm not letting it happen again!" And then the form of her salvation comes in the shape of an elevator at the end of the hall. A calm comes over her: there's nothing in the world but those shining metal doors. "Both of us or nothing."

Shinichi's saying something about Ms. Jodie, there's roaring in her ears. "Ran, you have to listen to me. Get out, Get to Ms. Jodie and Mr. Black, get to Doctor Agasa, warn them, Ai will know what to do. Ran, _please_ , you can't escape with your hands full, these people are dangerous—" Ai? So familiar! He usually calls her Haibara. There's no time to think on it now.

"Don't you think I know that, Shinichi?" she snaps, pressing the up button on the elevator.

"Ran, they will _kill_ you and won't blink an eye," he says, and Ran can hear his ire growing.

"No they won't," she says stubbornly.

"They will."

"They won't," She says. "I'm their collateral." It's the typical hostage set up. It's the only reason they had to take her as well. "They keep me alive, you cooperate. They kill me, they'll have to grab one of our other friends. It will takes time, effort, manpower, discretion. They'll keep me alive." 'Until I'm no longer of any use,' she doesn't say.

"Ran, you can't sacrifice your life on a whim!" Shinichi says.

"And you can?" she snaps back.

Shinichi has nothing to say to that so he doesn't. "Ran, please, you've got to get out of here—"

The door to the elevator opens, and Vermouth is standing there with another man in black. His cap is pulled low over his face, so she can't see any features of his face, only the light color of his hair. Ran takes a few steps back as Vermouth and the man step out of the elevator, blocking her escape. Shinichi curses, low and fierce.

Behind her, lab coat #2 has finally caught up. Breathing hard, she injects something into Ran's neck. She fights it off as long as she can, fights them off as long as she can, kicking wildly like a captured mustang, holding desperately to Shinichi as they attempt to wrest him from her.

In retrospect, that only makes whatever it is act faster. Everything blurs, and she falls back against the white wall as her grip falters and Shinichi leaves her arms. She sees Shinichi bite the man on the arm as hard as he can, the man cursing and dropping him, but by that time, she's too gone to care.

Ran can't keep her eyes open.

"I'm sorry, Angel," she hears Vermouth whisper, barely loud enough for even Ran to hear it as close as they are, Vermouth's hand brushing the top of her head softly in a tender caress, but that can't be right.

Everything fades into darkness.


	4. R E C A L L

It's happened only twice, but Ran is already tired of being forced into unconsciousness. She opens her eyes, but the blinding bright light forces her to close them again. Her shirt sticks to her skin and itches; she goes to scratch it, but something is holding her in place at the wrists. She shifts; they've strapped down her ankles as well.

Exhaustion tugs at her; all she wants to do is go back to sleep. It's from whatever sedative they gave her, has to be. She fights the lethargy though, waits for her eyes to adjust. She stretches out her other senses though, trying to figure out where she is.

The low buzz of machinery is the only sound she hears. She remembers the woman petting her hair, and recoils in disgust at the thought. They drugged her. It had been a trap. The hallway twisted around, that is the only way they could have gotten behind her.

She opens her eyes finally, blinking furiously. A large bright light is shining directly above her. She's strapped to cold metal. Her skin sticks to it where her camisole has ridden up. She can't see much past her chest, but they've left her in the same clothes, and the blood has dried, which is what's itching.

Ran has a roaring headache and her body feels like one big bruise. The day is finally getting to her, she thinks. Two fights, a desperate run, worry about Shinichi…she can't help it. Everything overwhelms her suddenly and she starts to cry. She keeps it quiet, blinking furiously because she can't wipe them away.

She's never felt so helpless. Maybe if she had gone left instead of right in the fight in that alley, maybe if she hadn't told Shinichi she missed him over the phone, they wouldn't have gone to the restaurant and met up with those two men in black.

Things finally make so much sense. Shinichi's constant string of excuses, "Conan," giving Shinichi's apologies. Her suspicions that Shinichi had gone through great lengths to appease. Her breathing quickens. She's trapped and she's ruined her best chance for escape and they took Shinichi away from her and she doesn't know what to do. She cries harder; she's always cried easily, and the more she attempts to force them down, the more they swell up and close her throat. She stops after she's cried herself out, taking deep breaths and attempting to find the calm center she had before.

She can't. She's about six different kinds of wrung out, and she's going numb.

She turns her head. Shinichi isn't in the same room with her as far as she can tell; she didn't expect him to be, but it's hard to tell with the light in her face. It's hard to tell much of anything.

The shadow of a person. She can't see anything but the light on a white coat.

"Oh, you're not supposed to be up yet, you naughty girl."

She can't tell if it's male or female. A sharp prick like a bee sting, and she fades out again.

Ran wakes with a raging headache, instantly angry. Something beeps; she turns her head and it's a heart monitor reacting to her anger. She's still strapped down, only this time she has the machines attached to her, more than the heart monitor, though she can't recognize most of them. She's also in a hospital bed, tilted so she's sitting up. There's what looks to be a tube on her arm, pumping and bagging her blood to a bag hanging on an IV stand. She tugs at her restraints. This time they're leather, and they have a little give. That might be something she can use. The overhead light is off, and Ran can't help but be a little grateful, though she squishes that down as best she can. It's the first rule of being a hostage. She has no doubt there's going to be a good cop and a bad cop, someone whose job is to be kind and make her think they aren't all bad. She has to remind herself that they will kill her at any time for any reason.

Vermouth. She scowls, tugging again at her restraints. She still doesn't know what the petting was all about, but it can only be bad.

The self-pity is over, she's had her cry. Now not only are her torso and thighs uncomfortably itchy from the blood, but also her face from her tears. She turns her head. The lab is modern and brightly lit, filled with cabinets and machines and computers, and what looks like a sink and Bunsen burner lab type thing against the far wall. She tries, but can't see the other half of the room. She sees the metal table she must have been on previously, littered with sharp objects, and several other beds. They're all empty.

The door is thick solid metal. There's nothing within reach of her hands. Her restraints are strange. They're leather, yes, but the straps look to be buckled behind the bed, rather than where she could get access to them if she somehow managed to get free.

She bites her lip. They left her head free, and leather is edible. Not filling, certainly not tasty, but edible. She could probably reach them if she twisted enough. The only problem is how long it would take for her to chew it. She's only strapped at her ankles and wrists, yet the stories Shinichi told her all involved boiling. But if she chewed it long enough—

Now that she can see clearly, she knows for a fact Shinichi isn't here with her. So, when she gets out of her restraints, her first priority is to find him. When, not if, because she's not going to let herself contemplate any other situation but their escape.

She hears a door open—not the one she can see, there must be another one behind her where she can't see, being unable to turn that far to see with the bed in the way. Ran stiffens, quickly debating as to whether or not she should fake she's still asleep. There's no telling who's behind that door. Her anticipation builds, churning at her stomach. She's feeling light-headed and the bag of her blood is nearly full. They must be returning to check on her. Or maybe this was how they planned to kill her.

In the end, she decides to face them with her eyes open as the footsteps come closer.


	5. R E V E R B

The steps reverberate through the room. They're coming from behind her, sharp in the echoing silence.

Inexorable.

The fact she can't see them makes it even worse. It sounds like it's heralding her execution.

Step. Step. Step.

It wouldn't be so bad, Ran thinks, if she could just see them.

Step. Step. Step.

She reminds herself to be prepared for anything, subtly shifting in her bed. She still feels dizzy, her head spinning from everything, but she tempers her fear by regulating her breath.

The figure comes closer, finally within eyesight, hands in his pockets, deceptively casual.

He's a man with light hair and a baseball cap pulled over his face. He's wearing sunglasses, but the face behind it looks young, younger than the man before in the narrow hallway with the prison cells.

She can't see most of his identifying features, but his skin is several shades darker than most people, a light umber that reminds her of Hattori.

Slacks, dress shoes, a starched white shirt covered by what looks like a jacket and a hood, a bizarre mix of formal and casual. And then he speaks. "Fancy meeting you here, Ms. Ran."

That voice…it's familiar, too, sounding almost kind. She can't remember where she's heard it, though. "Who are you?" She says, and her voice is hoarse, rough like sandpaper. She licks her lips, suddenly thirsty. Her mouth is dry. Fear, she thinks.

"You don't recognize me, Ms. Ran?" He asks. "Because I certainly know you." He smirks.

Ran's blood runs cold. Her eyes burn, but she imagines she's ice, and keeps them at bay, somehow. She doesn't doubt his words. She _knows_ him. Somehow, from somewhere.

"I heard you were here, and you had a little boy with you. Color me surprised," he says, and there's something like dark amusement at his tone.

Ran didn't think she could go any colder, but his words send ice crawling down her spine.

"It's funny, but I'd heard this particular little boy was on a trip with his mother out-of-town. Strange he ended up here, isn't it?"

Ran keeps her mouth shut, just staring. The man's eyes on her don't waver, though it's hard to tell behind his sunglasses. He's waiting for a response, she realizes. Well, he's going to have to wait a long time.

"I just had to come and take a look myself."

Ran knows she doesn't know the full story behind whatever happened to Shinichi. She can only suspect. Conan arrived the same night Shinichi disappeared—after following the two men in black. They've been after him since. Only, they left him alone when he was small, which means they didn't know. But if they didn't know, what did they have to do with it? Oh, her headache isn't making thinking this through any easier.

"Especially since Gin and Vodka said they brought in a teenager. Imagine that."

Gin. Vodka? Those two men! It had to be! Vermouth, Gin, Vodka…Ran's not much one for sarcasm, that's more of a Shinichi thing, but she's been around him long enough that it just slips out. " What does that make you? Tequila?"

"Bourbon," he says, amused. "Tequila has been gone from this world for quite some time."

Ran blinks. They really are all named after alcoholic drinks.

"In any case, you don't have an answer for me?" he says, hands in the pockets of his black slacks. He pulls out a pocket knife with a blade far longer than six centimeters, flicks it open, and starts cleaning his nails. Ran keeps her mouth shut. So he's the bad cop, then. Intimidation.

She wants to bite her lip again, but she knows Bourbon will take any sign of nervousness as an opportunity. Plus that knife is against the law. Ran's not sure why she finds it darkly funny she's concerned with his breaking of Japan's knife length ban. He's probably done far worse than carry an illegal knife.

There's no way she can speak. She still doesn't know everything that's going on, but it's clear they're looking for answers about Shinichi's change. Joke's on them. She doesn't know either. She only knows what she saw, which isn't much.

She remains silent. "No?"

Nothing in the world is going to compel her to speak. Not the way the knife gleams in the light. Not the way he stands there, body language expectant, intimidating. Not the way his friendly voice unnerves her.

Ran feels light-headed, her arm tingling from the blood leaving her body. She wonders if he's actually going to cut her. She doesn't know why they're bagging her blood, but she is almost certain it has to do with the fact she and Shinichi share a rare blood type. She's worried, though. He lost a lot of blood when they shot him and when his wound reopened, and that might be what they're taking it for. If they've tested it and realized they were compatible, that means they need him alive.

It also means there's a very good chance they might need her to be a steady supply, and will keep her alive as well.

"Pity," he says, giving a light, airy laugh. He steps closer to the bed, knife out, and the heart monitor starts beeping. Then again, maybe not.

The door behind her opens again. Short staccato steps this time, rapid and close together, until a woman with dark black hair and blue eyes enters her vision. She pokes the man in the chest. He takes a step back, hands up. "Can't you continue the interrogation later?" she says, poking him again. "We're on a tight schedule. Sherry didn't leave much behind. I've got a lot of catching up to do over these old project notes."

He laughs again. "Sure. Let me know, when I can return, Madeira?"

"Give me a day or so," she reaches over, clamps the tube, pulls it from Ran's arm, transfers the blood to a cooler. "I'm still going over the brat's preliminary analysis."

"You're certain it's a side effect?" Bourbon asks. "I was unable to confirm." He turns towards Ran. "She's keeping her mouth shut."

She waves him off. "We had cameras in the cell. It is. Sherry was a fan of hiding things. You should know. Killing her was your job."

"Not my fault she managed to escape. Seems like no one stays dead anymore."

"Yes, but the boy's blood still carries markers of the apotoxin. We have those, at least, so this may end up in our favor after all."

Bourbon looks up. Ran follows his gaze to a camera. He grins.

"All right, you two have fun," he says, leaving the two of them in the room together.

The woman turns to her, puts a oxygen mask type thing to her face, all businesslike, turning on a switch.

As Ran falls back under, her last thought is that she's getting really, really, sick and tired of this.

* * *

OC alert! A necessary evil!


	6. R E V I V E

Ran opens her eyes and she's on the metal table underneath the bright light again. There's something on her face, there's a face above her own, but it's shadowed, blurry.

She hears a frantic voice barking orders but it sounds like it's coming from underwater. She attempts to move her head but she can't. She can't move at all. Even fluttering her eyelids takes monumental effort.

She's so cold.

Her heart lurches, there's the long solid beep of a flatline.

Then nothing.

She wakes again, still on the table. Only it's colder still, and she shivers. The light is off; there's no telling how much time has passed. It's still hard to open her eyes, but she manages. The room's different, that's the first thing she notices, even from before. Everything hurts. She attempts to lift her head; she has not strength and it falls to the side instead, making a loud _thunk_! against the table.

And that's when her eyes land on _him_.

He's strapped down naked on a table right next to her, almost like she could reach out and touch him, if her arm was free. He's unconscious, his breathing raspy like the tearing of a paper bag. His skin appears almost translucent, he's so pale.

He's turning blue. His breath fogs out into the low light of the room.

And the _marks_. They're awful. A patchwork of bruises and cuts up and down his body. No, not cuts. Incisions. Bruises from injections, broken veins.

Some of them look days old.

Ran has no way to keep track of time. There are no windows wherever here is. She doesn't know how long they've been there. Only she's not hungry, she doesn't feel any bodily urges. She feels weak, though that could just be from whatever it is they're doing to her. Hours, days, weeks may have passed for all she knows.

But what they're doing to her pales in comparison to what they must be doing to him.

She's got to get them out.

Ran can't stand it anymore! She has to get to him! She struggles at the restraints, metal on this table, tugging and pulling and thrashing, but there's no give. She pulls and pulls and pulls until her wrists bleed from the chafing, but it's no use.

An alarm sounds somewhere. More footsteps. Ran's ready for them this time, though, and as they reach out a hand towards their neck she bites the fleshy part of their thumb as hard as she can.

A man's cry. Shinichi wakes up. She hears his hoarse shout of "Ran!" and that only encourages her to bite harder.

She tastes blood. They hit her. She refuses to let go. They hit her cheek, once, twice, thrice, sending an explosion of pain behind her skull. It hurts. Fire burns the entire right side of her face. It hurts _so much_. She keeps biting anyway.

Shinichi is screaming. "Stop it! You bastards!" he says.

The man hits her again, Shinichi pleading, his voice high and young. "Please! Let Ran go, I'll do anything—"

They hit her until she's forced to let go, punctuated by Shinichi's begging. She turns and hunches her face against the metal slab. Blood drips down her face. She doesn't know if it's hers or theirs.

"Ran—" Shinichi yells, but he suddenly goes silent. Ran can't turn her head to look, but the noises sound awful. Clanging, the sound of a drill-like machine, and the thud of flesh on flesh. He's so small like this. It wouldn't take much force to kill him. Ran has just made a huge mistake.

"Keep the things separated from now on!" The man she bit says, cursing. It's a new voice. "They get too wild in the same room."

"How am I supposed to do my tests?" the woman from earlier asks, the one Bourbon called Madeira.

"You figure it out," the man snaps.

The prick of a needle, ice cold fire plunging into her veins, and Ran is gone again.

Ran wakes in _**agony**_.

Liquid fire courses through her veins burning her from the inside out. She can't breathe. It's like there's a weight on her chest, a mountain of stones slowly crushing her. So much pressure, like she's being squeezed from the inside out. Every beat of her heart sends pain radiating outwards towards the extremes of her body. Every time she thinks she's had as much as she can stand another wave comes crashing down.

She doesn't know how anyone can be alive and hurt this much. It's pain beyond comprehension, beyond sanity. She twists in her restraints, uncaring at how it pulls on her raw wrists, anything to get away from the pain.

Only she can't escape the pain because it is _inside_ her, burrowing deep, eating her alive from the inside out.

When she passes out again, this time, it's nothing but sheer relief.

Ran wakes to a dull ache everywhere but her face, which is throbbing with hot sharp pain. Serves her right, she thinks. It is a lesson. A reminder. To do better, to _be_ better. Every since they took them, she's done nothing but react, fighting back like a wild animal.

No more. They've already hurt Shinichi twice because of her misbehavior. No more. Ran's smart. She may not be as smart or observant or as well-learned as Shinichi, but she's no slouch in the intelligence department. There's a way out of this. She just has to find it. No one is hovering above her. She's still strapped to the metal table with metal restraints and absolutely freezing, her head still pounds with a ferocious migraine, and she feels faint from the pain and exhaustion, but she won't get to pick and choose the time she escapes. So it's time to collect her thoughts while she has a chance.

Something picks at her about her conversation with that man, Bourbon, for the first part. They have cameras, the woman working on her has confirmed it, so why was he trying to get information from her when all he has to do is access the video feed?

Then there is the fact he's familiar. Which means whoever they are already has eyes on her and her family. She swallows. She doesn't know how long she's been gone but her father must already be frantic. He shouldn't be alone; he falls apart. That's one of the reasons she chose to stay with him, that she still chooses to stay. She puts that out of her head for now; those kinds of thoughts will only distract her right now.

It seems almost like he was giving her information, like he manipulated Madeira into giving her information. That is the thing about interrogations—she'd learned that from watching her father and Inspector Megure and even Shinichi. One almost always gives away what they're looking for by the questions that they ask.

And then there is that name, Sherry.

Something about it is exceedingly familiar. Sherry. A type of fortified wine, same as Madeira. Same as Vermouth. She swallows again. Which means she's a member of whoever these people are. She never thought she'd be grateful for her father's drinking habit, even though it's usually beer. Who hid a side effect—the shrinking maybe? She doesn't know what apotoxin is, but apoptosis is the death of cells from natural growth.

Maybe apotoxin is reverse apoptosis? Ran knows nothing about biology, only what they've covered at Teitan, but what if instead of the death of the cell, it instead rejuvenates? Mabe that is how Shinichi has been shrinking? And if they're working off her old project notes, maybe Sherry invented it, and hid that shrinking was a side effect?

Bourbon's job is killing Sherry, Sherry must have left these people, Sherry's not dead, he's familiar; though she still can't quite place him, Ran's sure she's come into contact with him on a regular basis. He's just so familiar.

Which means Sherry is close by. Now who exactly could she—

Ran jolts, eyes wide.


	7. R E A S O N

Ai.

Ai.

 _Ai._

Ai is 'Sherry.'

It makes so much sense.

A cynical and dour little girl. Like Conan, extremely mature for her age. Shinichi's voice runs through her mind. ' _Get to Ai, warn them, Ai will know what to do.'_

Why would he mention a little girl specifically in the same breath as Ms. Jodie and Dr. Agasa? Why would a little girl know what to do about running from dangerous people? Especially now that Ran knows his secret, having seen the transformation herself. Why would he use such a familiar form of address unless it is a clue?

Only one reason. If Shinichi could change into a child…then so could she. It's not impossible, Shinichi proves that.

It explains everything. Her standoffish personality, her distrust of everyone but the Professor, Conan, and the Detective Boys. Especially adults.

But why hide with them? Shinichi trusts her, or he wouldn't have said what he did. ' _Get to Ai,'_ like she was the solution for everything. And then there had been the times Ai had been deathly afraid, especially when there had been rumors of people in black, such as on the Bell Tree Express.

And if Ai was the one that invented whatever it was, hid the shrinking side effect and left these people, then Shinichi's change had outed her to these people. They now know to be looking for a child.

Which means that she and everyone else around her are in danger, including Ran's father. Including the other children. The good Professor. No wonder Shinichi had wanted her to leave him behind as a distraction. Ran's need to escape has just risen tenfold. If Ai and the rest don't know that Shinichi and Ran have been captured, they'll have little to no warning.

And Ran—well, she likes Ai. Ai is cold, and had been noticeably disdainful of Ran at first, but not so much, anymore. And the way she interacts with the Detective Boys, especially her constant kindness towards little Ayumi…Ran finds it gives her more reason to escape.

In order to escape, she'll need information.

Ran licks her lips, her mouth dry, and looks around the room. It's hard to tell, but this lab seems different from the previous two. She looks to her right; an IV bag is hanging, connected to her, and she can see a ton of lab equipment, tubes and machines. She recognizes the centrifuge and the shaking thing, though she doesn't know what it is actually called. Lots of complicated electronic equipment and even more computers, rather than the chemistry feel of the first room. Something to do with DNA sequencing, maybe?

Like the other rooms, this one doesn't have windows.

They've bandaged her wrists; they itch, a little. There's something odd about her hands as she stretches her fingers; they're not quite right, but she can't tell what's wrong with them. It's still cold, but it's not desperately freezing like it was before. As Ran checks herself though, she realizes that she's naked.

That's…not good. She's going to have to find some clothes before she makes her way out of the building.

The same not-quite-right feeling hits her as she looks down at herself. Something is different; she can't tell what. She tugs at the restraints. Her hands are by her side. This time, the metal cuffs are a little loose. She's able to turn her wrists. It helps her leverage herself up using her elbows, and while it takes much of her dwindling strength, she manages to see a little bit more of the room. Still no light.

Ran cases the corners of the room. There in the top corner of the room, barely perceptible in the dim light, is a camera. It's in the same exact place the one in the other room is. If she hadn't known where to look, she wouldn't have picked up on it. She falls back to the table, her abdomen muscles sore from the strain of holding herself up. Her dirty hair flops over her chest, soaked in blood and sweat and who knows what else. It seems longer now, though, for some reason.

Ran shifts, feeling something sharp poke her in the neck as she does. She bites her busted lip, shakes a little bit, and her hair and whatever's in it falls on the table, making a _ping_! noise, landing right beside her arm. It's too high for her to grab, but the restraints are a little looser than they've been. Ran bites her lip again. She doesn't want to dislocate her thumb. She could break it and then slide it out easily. It happened to one of the girls in the Teitan Karate Club, but she needed surgery to fix the ligament, and Ran's already weak. She doesn't need to handicap herself further. But's she's able to turn her wrists. Maybe if she maneuvers her hand carefully instead of thrashing willy-nilly…

She tucks her thumb underneath her hand as far as she can go. The edges of the restraints are dull, but she has rubbed her wrists raw trying to break free. She grimaces, and deliberately saws at her wrist with the edge of the restraints, thumb tucked underneath her hand, trying as carefully as she can to pull it free. Within a few tries, her wrist starts bleeding again, but she shoulders gamely on.

She doesn't know how long she's going to have free until the scientists return. It's got to be now. She's not sure, but she thinks she almost _died_. Shinichi could be dead right now after the way she saw him last. It's got to be now, or they really will die in here as lab rats.

It works after about ten agonizing minutes. Blood drips from her wrist, but she's free.

The first thing she does is reach over beside her and feel for the thing that poked her in the neck and fell, digging it out from the tangle in her hair.

It's a key. There was a key in her hair. And there's a stiff wire wrapped around the key, perfect for unlocking the simple mechanism of the restraints. She stares dumbly at it for a moment. Maybe she can't trust it. Where did it come from? But they're dead either way. What does she have to lose? This is the best chance she's going to have.

Tears well up in Ran's eyes. She did it. She's free.

Ran fights to hide her grin.

No time like the present.


	8. R E L I E F

It's a simple matter to reach over with her free hand, bend the wire just so, and click the lock free. It hurts for Ran to engage her muscles though; her limbs are stiff and shaking. It takes a long minute to recover from reaching over. She takes a deep breath before pushing herself up to a sitting position, maneuvering the wire around to unlock her the cuffs around her legs.

She frowns, looking at her body as she works to get herself free. Shinichi isn't the only one dotted with the marks of experimentation. Surgical cuts, sutures, far too many injection marks to name, harsh purple bruises where they'd missed the vein.

Ran wrinkles her nose and fights down her disgust. She's ugly like Frankenstein's monster, made of patchwork, wires, and paper-thin skin. Purple and yellow like an abstract canvas. The lock on her ankle clicks.

Ran hasn't been paying attention, but there's a weird sort of scrape-bruise on her legs, starting just above her ankles and stretching to the tops of her feet. As she unlocks the other one, she slips the wire through the open loop at the top of the key to keep it safe. She shifts to the edge of the table and eases herself off to her feet.

She falls flat to the floor, barely keeping her head from hitting it and busting open with her hands and elbows braced. Her matted hair drapes around her like a curtain. It's then she feels the tug of her IV; that's right, that and several other things for her body are hooked up to her as well, like the heart monitor.

Ran doesn't know if the failsafes from Hollywood are real, so she crawls over to the wall socket and unplugs the equipment instead of just pulling it out of her directly. It takes all her strength, but she manages. Some of them turn off. Others don't. They must be on back-up or battery power. She doesn't have time for this. She'll have to chance it.

She pulls out her IV, wincing, then the other things connected to her. She's lucky they didn't have her on a breathing or feeding tube, though they had taken care of other things she really doesn't want to think about. She shudders.

Finally free, she starts on the medical sensors. She hesitates for a minute before jerking them off one by one.

She nearly sobs in relief when there's no beeping.

Ran pushes herself to her feet, wobbling like a shaky newborn foal, but she makes it. The feeling of wrongness grows. She still can't quite figure it out, but her balance is off.

Very off. As a martial artist, she's got a very keen sense of balance; it's how her kicks become the epitome of strength and balance. And her hair normally falls a little bit past her mid-back, not nearly to her waist. It's as she makes her way to the cupboards looking for bandages to wrap her wrist she figures it out.

She's shorter.

Not by much, just three or four centimeters, but it's enough there is a noticeable difference. What have they done to her? Just like Shinichi, they must have been using her to experiment, maybe as some kind of control?

A noise makes her jerk up. What is she doing? She needs to be concentrating on getting out of there, not on woolgathering. Three searches later and she finds them. She checks for clothes but the room is empty of everything except what looks like a fire blanket for putting out lab fires.

She doesn't have time for this. No doubt someone's already on their way. There's the camera in the corner that has no doubt caught her escape.

She wraps her wrist as she makes her way to the door. This one doesn't have a thick metal fire door, just a regular door with opaque glass.

Some part of her is a little relieved that they don't have all the little keycards seen in all the movies. She tries the knob; of course, it's locked. She slips the key in, it goes.

Ran turns the key, holding her breath.

The door swings open.

She looks into the hallway. The set-up is a lot like the cells below, but there's many doors. Hers is in the corner of the hall where wall ends. There are six doors in this corridor and a set of double doors. She can see the waning crescent moon through small windows near the top of the ceilings. They're not barred. Shinichi probably fits. The moonlight is the only thing lighting the hall, rather than the dim light of the room before her.

It's so creepy, looking at it on the surface. But somehow, Ran, who has always been frightened of horror films, finds herself beyond fear. There's urgency to get to Shinichi but there is nothing but numbness where fear should be. Nothing but numbness and pure determination.

Besides, she thinks as she looks ruefully at her arms, in this scenario, it's almost like she's the monster. That thought gives her a strange sort of strength.

Logically, they should be keeping Shinichi in the same part of the building. She checks the door next to hers. Nothing. It wasn't locked, so she didn't expect it to be. She checks the next one. It's locked. She opens up, but there's still nothing.

It's impossible this way. She'll be checking doors until they catch her. She looks at the double doors ahead. She remembers the big metal fire door. If she can find that, she can find him.

Some part of her curls with unease at leaving those doors unopened. What if he's in there? She shakes her head to clear her thoughts. There's no time. She lopes past the rest of the doors and tries the double doors. They're locked. Her key doesn't unlock them.

Ran nearly tears her hair out in frustration, banging a bloody handprint on the door. She turns back around looking more carefully at the hall when she sees it.

High in the wall, there's a vent access. There's a fire extinguisher, too. Two cameras, covering each other's blind spot. Those same high windows.

She gets an idea.


	9. R E S C U E I

In two sharp hits with the fire extinguisher, the cameras are down. Ran's panting from the effort; her arms shake, but she fights through it. Now they won't be able to see where she goes next.

Her next step is climbing an old heater to access the window. It's an old-fashioned cast-iron radiator heater, the kind hardly seen anymore. She tentatively touches it; it's not on, and they're rather sturdy, bolted to the wall as they are. She climbs, falling and slipping hard, landing on her knee and nearly falling off.

Ran shakes it off and tries again, her legs unsteady but holding. She has just enough height to pry the rather rusted window open; it's a little hard, especially with her tiring arms, but she manages to make it. She holds her breath as she takes a look. The moon illuminates the grounds below. She's on something like the third floor, nothing but the tops of a few trees below. The fall would be survivable; her plan is still on. She's going to make them think she's escaped from here. She probably could fit, if she were a little more flexible. She smears a little of her blood against the windowsill. Some is on the heater already from her fall.

Then she makes her way to the vent access close to where she escaped. The top is on a hinge and the bottom is screwed shut, but luckily she has an answer for that. She pulls the wire from the key and bends it so she has a serviceable screwdriver. Unlike the window, the screws aren't rusted in or particularly tight, so she's able to screw them open just fine. She casts one look around, making sure she hadn't left any blood over here. Wouldn't want to give them the _right_ conclusion after all.

It's as she's using the leverage to move inside the vent that she realizes she won't be able to screw the vent back. She shakes her head. She's got to chance it, even though her overactive mind imagines them pumping the central cooling system full of poisonous gas.

She keeps the screws with her, just in case. There might be every chance they won't spot it.

But something is bothering her. All this has been too easy. Why hasn't anyone come yet? The camera in the room was on, and clearly trained on her. She hadn't meant to, but she'd made so much noise it makes her sick just thinking about it.

It's a tight fit, but she manages, inching her way through the access for three or four meters. There's so much give it makes her nervous, even with her light weight. Every time she moves it clangs, so she moves as slowly and as quietly as possible. Ahead there's a sharp drop; one leads up, one leads down. The vent at the top leads to access on this level. At her athletic peak, she'd have absolutely no problem doing it, but…

Honestly, it concerns her a little bit. But she has no choice. The only other option is to sit here and starve.

It'll be an awkward stretch, but she thinks she has the strength to reach it and pull herself up to the vents in the ceiling. She lays there for a long moment, gathering her waning strength.

She turns, facing up. She slides out, nice and slow, hands on the sheer metal wall, one in a half-grip because of the screws, wire, and key. She frowns. That might affect her leverage, but there's every reason to believe she might need it later.

Ran reaches up. Her hands hit the edge of the vent before she loses the fulcrum of her lower body. With a tentative grip on the edge of the vent, it's easy to slide the rest of the way out, balancing herself on the balls of her feet against the bottom edge of the vent.

She doesn't look down. The drop will take her all the way down to the sub-basement, probably, if this is even the same building that houses the cells. By the age of the cells and the age in this particular corridor, she thinks it _is_ the same building.

Ever so slowly, Ran pulls herself up. It's painful. Her bones ache, her muscles are stiff; she doesn't know how long she was out of it, interspersed with brief periods of wakefulness. Centimeter by centimeter, she makes it.

Halfway through, her strength begins to falter. She takes a breath, and with one last desperate burst of will, she pushes off.

For a long, agonizing moment, everything wavers; one hand slips, she's falling, falling, falling down the chute.

She catches herself, barely, one of the screws plummeting to the bottom as she loosens her grip on the objects in her hand. She can't hear it make a sound. She's panting hard, her heart thundering.

She takes one last deep breath and pulls herself up.

That's it. She made it.

Ran doesn't know how long she lays face down in the dust of the vent trying to catch her breath, but eventually she crawls. It's a confusing branch-like mess, she quickly discovers. With six options, she takes the second from the left.

It leads her to a small dark room. It looks almost like the one she escaped from. She inches backward and takes a straight partition.

It leads to the hall; the one with the double doors. She can tell because of her handprint. The previous room must have been behind one of the locked doors she didn't check.

She crawls on; Each time the vents branch, she checks the room. She still hasn't found Shinichi. She hasn't found anyone else, for that matter.

As she crosses beyond, takes a right to another set of doors, she notices that these have a key card reader and what looks like a small haptic interface below that, the hologram-like keyboard is like something out of science-fiction (Then again, so is Shinichi's de-aging). The main vents also become narrower. The door below she can barely see through the vents has a bio-hazard symbol next to it; it makes sense that the vents would be on restricted access just in case.

She crawls back out, still looking for Shinichi or the elevator when she hears them.

Voices.


	10. R E S C U E II

Some part of Ran wants to shrink back down against cool metal of the vent and hide. She can't remember much of anything but bodies standing above her, vague voices through the ocean of unconsciousness.

But she recognises this one, even though she's only heard it once before.

Vermouth. She crawls closer down the vent. The indecipherable voices sound out much clearer.

"—held up pretty well, considering."

She can't hear the voice of the other person, only that it's light, and low, barely above a murmur. It sounds annoyed, and a little sarcastic.

"You don't have to be so rude."

Another reply from the other person, this one fiercer, the words staccato and sharp, even though she still can't make out most of them. As Ran moves, she forgets to put her weight alongside the edge of the metal where it's sturdier, and the vent clanks, the bend of the metal sounding like thunder.

The voice stops abruptly.

"Well, well. Seems it might be sooner than we both think," and Vermouth laughs and laughs and laughs. "This is your last chance, cool guy." A threat. Ran's stomach churns.

Footsteps heading towards Ran's position, and Ran can see her through the vent, but the woman doesn't even look up, just inputs a code into the haptic interface—394869. 'Thank you, Sherlock,' Ran mouths the homonyms to remember the number as Vermouth swipes her keycard through through the reader. It's a strange set of numbers. It almost sounds like—but no, it couldn't be.

Could it?

"One hour," Vermouth says, seemingly to herself as she leaves the room. Ran almost thinks she's talking to her; but no, that couldn't be right, right? She crawls deeper into the room, angling herself to see out of the vent just right.

And she sees him below.

 _Shinichi_.

He's still a little battered and looks a little more bruised, but he's awake. And most importantly, alive.

She's found him.

He's strapped down like she was, looking small against the great wide expanse of the table. He looks so tired, so lost. So small. So fragile. His eyes are open, but they're half-lidded, and the expression on his face…So much pain. There's no light in his eyes. It's almost like he's given up.

The lab he's in looks much newer, not like the room she was in. Once again, she thinks back to the double doors, and the fact that none of the people in black were around as she woke up.

Ran bites her lip, wincing since she forgot it had been split. Now she has to figure out a way to get him out. She didn't quite think this through. The industrial sized vents are large enough to fit through, but if she goes directly down, they won't be able to get out this way. She licks her lips. He might, if she lifts him, but he can't lift her weight, and there's nothing to use to climb back up.

She hates to leave him behind, but she has to, if only for a moment.

Making a note of the room's location in her mental map, she crawls down two rooms, scanning them out of the vents. Nothing of use. The third is a small storage room, lit by faint red emergency lights. It's filled with junk; it might be a way to climb back up if they manage to get out; there's a stack of wooden crates in the corner, what looks like a janitorial corner filled with cleaning solutions and a mop and a bucket—and that throws her for a moment, that even mad scientist labs need to be cleaned, she wonders who does it, the man with the square chin?

Ran shakes the idea off, reaches down, uses her hands to grasp the vent grate and pull up with all her body weight. It's hard to get leverage in the tight space. The ones in the ceiling aren't screwed down; instead, they're placed on a lip from above. It's heavy and hard to pull. It isn't easy on her arms, and she's breathing hard by the time she places it to the side.

That done, she sides over, slowly lowering herself from the grate before she reaches the end of her strength, falls the three meters to the ground, landing hard and rolling her left ankle.

Ran stays still for the longest moment, her heart beating like a rabbit's, her mind endlessly repeating 'What if they heard?' After about a minute of no one coming, she struggles to her feet. Her ankle's a little weak, but it manages to bear her weight. She looks around the room.

In the corner next to the cleaning supplies, there's a pile of dark rags. She limps over and finds a pair of maintenance coveralls. She can't believe her wild luck. They look clean; she slips them on. They're men's and far too long for her, but after rolling them about four times, they fit.

Now clothed, she heads towards the door, about to open it before she thinks about cameras. Biting her lip again, she glances towards the crates, and begins stacking them. As she reaches out though, she finds her hair has grown a little past her waist. No, her hair hasn't grown, Ran realizes in growing shock.

She's shrinking.

Just like Shinichi did, only slower.

She's running out of time.

A burst of adrenaline runs through her veins, and suddenly, she's stacking the crates as fast as she can. It's best to have her escape route now, before she loses the strength and leverage that comes with her size. Interspersed with that burst of energy is growing fear; a rising desperation.

The lock is on the inside. She unlocks the door. She pokes her head out, immediately assaulted by bright light. There's no one in the hall, Vermouth long gone.

No time to worry about the cameras. Ran's got to get to Shinichi NOW.

After one last glance behind her, she takes the mop. It's made of wood, and she breaks the head off using the floor and her body weight.

She counts the doors, and on the correct one, the door solid, the bio-hazard door just at the end of the hall, she gets leverage with the mop handle, and swings as hard as she can at the keycard lock, hitting it.

She does it again and again until her arms feel like udon.

But it's working. The reader comes off the wall, and she can see the electrical wires, fraying. She uses the mop head to pry it the rest of the way.

The haptic interface underneath reads an error message, asking for a password. Ran hesitates for a moment, but they already have her fingerprints anyway. She types in 3-9-4-8-6-9.

The door swings open.


	11. R E S C U E III

Shinichi.

Tears well up in Ran's eyes; she didn't think she had any more left to cry, but they come, no matter how hard she tries to stop them. She doesn't let that stop her, though. In an instant, she's by his side, the mop handle with its sharp head clattering to the floor, working the thin sturdy wire inside the round metal cuff of the restraint around Shinichi's ankle.

"Who—?" Shinichi starts, his voice as then as a thread, " _R-ran_?" he sputters out, shock filling his voice. He's shivering, but his eyes aren't dead anymore. They're filled with brightness and warmth.

"No time to talk!" Ran says as the lock clicks open. She moves to the second one. It's getting easier the more she does it, so this one barely takes any time at all.

"Y-you look—" Shinichi says, and there's rising panic in his voice. "How?" he says, dragging out the word, breathless.

"I'm here, aren't I?" Ran says, moving to his wrist. Oh, his skin is so cold, it's like ice. The minute his hand is free he covers himself. "C'mon," she says as she unlocks the last metal cuff. He pushes himself halfway up and falls back down, frustration written on his face as his arm refuses to hold his weight at all.

Ran grimaces. He's worse off than she is. And she knows how much heat those tables leech from the body.

She holds out her arms. "Come on," she says, gesturing towards herself with both hands.

"N-no!" Shinichi squeaks, scandalised. "I c-can w-walk," he says, his teeth chattering. "J-just give me m-minute."

"Oh come on, your dignity isn't worth your life! We don't have a minute! We're kind of in a hurry and you're freezing," she says, plowing right over him and ignoring his stuttered protests just like she used to do when she thought he was Conan and being particularly stubborn. Hmm. Come to think of it, that had usually worked on Shinichi too.

"B-but Ran," Shinichi whines as she scoops him up and puts him on her hip. He wraps his arms around her neck.

"Let's get out of here," she says, adjusting her grip under him to make it sturdier.

"W-we have to g-get the data," he says, clinging to her neck. "F-find it," Shinichi says. "T-take it with us."

Ran shakes her head. "We need to get away while we still can," she says, crouching to pick up the broken mop.

"Y-you don't know what they could do with it," Shinichi says, his voice growing steadier. "We need that data."

"I may not be a mystery freak like you," Ran says, fighting to keep her voice even. She's not a child, but he's treating her like one. He's more like one than she is right now! "But I'm pretty sure I have an idea. Is it worth our lives?" she asks, completely serious.

Shinichi gives her a long considering glance, and then he nods.

"Detour it is then," Ran says brightly, forcing the chipper tone. "Any idea where it might be?"

"I don't think they keep it on this floor. Vermouth didn't give me much to work with," he grumbles. "But I know at least that much."

"Shinichi, who is she?" Ran asks as she makes her way back into the hall. "You knew her. You knew _them_."

"It's a long story," he tries to deflect.

"Shinichi, don't give me that," Ran says, heading for the storage room. "You owe me that, at least."

"Ran I don't want you hurt—"

"No!" She says, tucking the mop under her arm to open the door, setting him down on one of the spare crates as soon as she gets inside, locking the door behind her. "Shinichi, please. I know what you're trying to do, and I appreciate the intent behind it, but I'm already here," she unzips the top of the coveralls to his widening eyes, his face turning red, but she's only showing him a long set of stitches over her heart. "I think I died," she says, stressing the word, and the color rushes away as fast as it rose. "There's nothing they could do to me now that they haven't already done," she says.

"Ran," he says, and his voice cracks from the bitterness of grief, and it's awful.

"Shinichi, look where we are. Hasn't the worst already happened?" she asks him. She's not trying to rub salt into the wound, but she's tired of him trying to go it alone. They need each other here, and Ran needs information.

"You—you're right," Shinichi says. "Ran, I'm so, so, sorry, I never meant for any of this to touch you." He's clutching at his heart again.

"Shinichi, are you okay?" He was clutching at his heart at the beginning of all this. Ran hopes he doesn't shrink again, this time into nothing.

"Fine," he says.

"Shinichi," she says again, warning note in her voice. She hands him what looks like a clean towel; it's just big enough to wrap around his waist and cover him. He's so small like this, Ran marvels again.

"They kept injecting me," he admits, after a long pause. "I don't know what it was, but there's a sense of euphoria. It makes it hard to think," he says. "Everything is so bright and foggy. I think it's some kind of narcotic," he said in a small voice. "My heart's beating too fast."

"Won't that interfere with finding out what made you shrink?" Ran asks.

"I don't think Madeira cares," he asks. "She's not like, she's not like—"

"Sherry?" Ran asks.

"How do you know that name?" Shinichi says.

"It came up. I'm not stupid, Shinichi. I can put two and two together and have it come out four."

"I never thought you were stupid. Idiot," he says.

"Because that is so convincing," Ran says, but she's smiling. "Come on. Let's get you into the ventilation shaft. We'll talk on the way."

She keeps her hands on him to keep him steady. Once again, she's amazed at how small he is as she easily lifts hm and keeps him from falling as he climbs up to the open grate.

Then it's her turn. She takes a deep breath, and starts climbing herself.


	12. R E C O U P

Ran climbs up behind Shinichi to find him curled in a ball.

His glazed eyes open, staring out at nothing. She panics for a moment, he's so still, she places her hand above his mouth and feels his breath ghosting over her skin. The relief floods through her like something palpable. "Shinichi, stay with me," Ran says, voice low, barely an echo in the ventilation system. The vent is barely big enough for her to move through, tighter with the both of them, and Shinichi is prone. "Shinichi?" she says again. Shinichi doesn't respond.

Ran twists her lip, biting the inside of her cheek. She snaps her fingers in front of his eyes; there's still no response. Not even a flicker of his eyelids. She closes the grate, pulls him against her chest, cradling him against her with one arm. His head lolls; she supports it.

She's faced with a choice, and one she doesn't want to make. Everything screams at her to take him and just go.

There's no room to sit up, but she tries as best she can, crawling so they're farther away from the room. They really have no time, and every instinct of Ran's is urging them to get away as soon as possible. What happened in that short amount of time? A bad reaction?

They're both weak. Malnourished, underfed, ill. A myriad of injection marks dot the inside of their arms, vast like constellations, aftereffects of mysterious vials filtered through blurred memories.

Do they really need that data? It's the worst idea; an impossible task, a Sisyphean effort. A death trap. Helplessness floats through her, a dark wave of emotion, rendering everything useless. Can they really make it out? Is there really any point in trying?

She shakes her head. No. Giving up has never been her style. "Shinichi," she says again, resting her face against his. She shakes him gently.

A gasp, and then, "Ran?" His voice, but so very weak. He's shifting in her arms, but it's weak, feeble.

"Hey," she says. "You with me?" voice still low.

"Yeah," he says, quiet and rough.

"The data?" Ran presses. She hates to do it, but she needs to while he's still awake. "Why?"

"A cure," he says. "To return to my old self. She promised to make it permanent, if—" his voice falters, as if he has accidentally divulged too much of a secret.

"Sherry," Ran whispers the name, still crawling, still carrying him. It's a mark of how out of it he is he does not protest. "Ai." She can tell Shinichi hears her by the way he tenses, followed by a sharp intake of breath.

"Ran, not here," Shinichi says. "Not now." He keeps his voice as quiet as hers, for all that it's still so weak.

"When, then?" Ran says. "When? They saw you. They did. They filmed your change. What's left? If they know about you, they know about her."

"You were deliberately led to me," he says.

"I know!" Ran says. "It was too easy to reach you. Is it a trap or not?"

"I don't know," Shinichi says. "With Vermouth, it's hard to tell." He lays his head against her shoulder, tired. "I think she's the only one that knows which side she's on."

"She's leading us," Ran states, rather than asks.

"Yeah. There's always a price with her," Shinichi says voice tired. "Always."

"When I was looking for you, I heard your conversation," Ran says.

"Y-you did?" Shinichi asks. "Everything?" his voice goes a little shrill at the end.

Ran looks away. It's not the end of it, but they really are in a hurry, and they don't have time for this. Let Shinichi keep his secrets, if only for the moment. "She gave us an hour. Tell me about this data. What is it, why do we need it, and do you have any idea where to begin looking?"

"Yeah. They keep it on localised servers. The ones I know of were on lab level four. You were placed in the old labs, and me on level 1. Has to be her doing, I'm high priority for the apotoxin alone. I have no idea how she managed it. There are four levels of security; on every level it increases. The idea is to head straight to level 4. Computers aren't my strongest point, but I've learned enough from Ai to make it in."

"And we have an hour."

"Plenty of time."

"Right," Ran says. "Get up there, get in, get out, all without getting killed or permanently disfigured."

"Someone's optimistic," he says.

"I prefer the term realistic." He's not the one who will actually have to do all of this. He's always been smart, but sometimes he doesn't think things through. "You're so reckless sometimes."

"A minuscule chance is still a chance," he says. "I have to believe we'll make it."

"Is a chance for the cure really worth your life?" she asks.

A long moment's pause. "Conan was fake," he says finally. "Conan always has been. He was a made up person. I am Kudō Shinichi."

She stops moving through the shaft, wrapping both her arms around him and pulling him into a tight embrace. "Conan is real," Ran says. "Conan is you."

"He's not! He was just a quick identity I made up on the spot when you confronted me that night," he says, almost churlishly. "He was never meant to be real."

Ran's not an idiot. She may not be some child prodigy, but she's certainly not an idiot. She'd suspected Shinichi of being Conan several times, no matter how fantastic it had seemed at the time, and when confronting him hadn't worked, she'd kept her suspicions to herself. Still, it's funny she can see it when he can't. "Conan is as real as you are. Conan is the part of you you never let others see," Ran says. "Your kindness. Your heart. Children aren't as limited as adults are. And sure, maybe some of it was acting, but ultimately, it was you." She kisses the top of his head. "I don't think we would have gotten along so well if you weren't."

"R-ran," Shinichi says.

"And the friendships you made. I don't think your friends would have ever become so attached to a fake person, either."

"They wouldn't understand. It doesn't matter if I had good intentions. I still lied."

"Hmm. Maybe. I think, if they knew what was behind it, they'd be quick to believe your intentions were noble. But that's not the point I was trying to make. I don't mind waiting," she says. "You could always grow up again." She pushes him forward and then they're moving again.

"Ten years is a long time, Ran," Shinichi says, and he sounds so defeated. "There are days I'm not even sure I know who _I_ am anymore." He laughs, but it's dark, and bitter, and flat, and unlike him. "We're not even sure that's even how it works. I could be this way the rest of my life, however long that is."

The identity crisis is something Ran's heard peripherally around the precinct, especially when it came to NOCs. "Then don't worry about names," Ran says. "You're still the mystery freak and Holmes otaku I've known ever since we were children, regardless of your current name or size."

"Yeah." A long pause, and then, "Remember the robbery case about eight months ago? The one that ended at the warehouse with a dead former client?"

"The billion yen case?" Ran asks. She feels rather than sees Shinichi nod.

"That was Sherry's sister. They told her if she did that, they both could go free. They lied, and Gin killed her."

"That's horrible!" Ran says. "Is that why—"

"Sherry was a biochemist. She worked for them until she found out they killed her. Then she refused, so they imprisoned her. She took her own invention. It usually kills."

"Instead, she shrank, just like you did," Ran finishes.

"I trust her," Shinichi says "Grudgingly, but it's there. The temporary antidotes are her work; she needs the full data to reverse engineer it. "

"Madeira said she destroyed her notes."

"Most of them, but she worked from another base. The files Sherry has are corrupted. If we can get a better copy, and get whatever progress Madeira may have made, I may be able to get back to myself. Ran, I need this. I need this," he repeats.

"Okay." They reach the end of the line.

Ran, with a little help from Shinichi, pushes open the grate to the elevator access, and they go down the hatch.

Standing on her shoulders, Shinichi promptly dismantles the camera.

"Elevator going up?" Ran asks.

Shinichi nods.


	13. R E W I N D

Ran thinks about it, as she waits for the elevator to reach the desired floor, how it all was before.

Before all this. When Shinichi was just a crush, someone she'd grown up with. When conflict left her alone, mostly. Left them alone.

Sometimes it still shakes her, how much bigger their problems had become in so short of time. And if she is reeling, she can only imagine how Shinichi must feel.

Sometimes, she just feels so…lost.

As if everything before had been some kind of construction. An illusion, crafted from cardboard and papier-mâché.

She hesitates to call it innocence, but in a way, it's the word that fits the most. Things were simpler, then. She and Shinichi walked to school together, he did something so stupid for someone so smart, she yelled at him, he griped at her, she talked about karate, he talked about Holmes. She hid her crush on him and he hid his on her. Furtive glances when the other wasn't looking, a brush of hands brushed off as something else.

She's still young. They're both still so young. Too young to have been through so much.

Second level.

And the look on his face right now is not different from the look he had that night at that fancy restaurant. When he was going to ask her—well, she still doesn't know what he was going to ask her. So soft. So pained. So far away, even though he's right here, arms linked around her neck.

She pretends not to notice how he tucks his head against her and closes his eyes, nuzzling against her neck, looking for comfort. How her arms are trembling from the exertion of carrying his hollow bird bones. He's so light like this. Like he'd float away if she so much as lets go for even a second.

Third level.

He tightens his grip around her as she shifts him around so he's on her back, tossing her hair out of the way. Her power has always been in her legs; she'll make do if they run into any opposition, even though her left ankle is a little tender still from rolling it.

Fourth level.

The elevator doors open. The halls are silent, filled with flickering ghosts, shadows from the fluorescent lights. Shinichi tenses against her back, and she has to fight to keep her posture loose. There's no one here. There should be. The emptiness scares her more than fighting through lab technicians might. She shifts Shinichi in her grip.

"Which way?" she asks him because somehow he always knows.

"I…I'm not sure," Shinichi says, slowly like it pains him to admit it. He doesn't, this time. He leans his head against her back, his breath hot against the nape of her neck. "Sorry," he mumbles, and regret and shame fill his voice. Like not being able to deduce it is a personal failure.

Why is it so empty? The thought ghosts through her mind. _"One hour_." There are forty-four minutes left.

She can't stop the nervousness that builds in her stomach, fizzy and bubbling. She fights it down, the same way she fights the hurt and the rage and the anger and the pain. She may be trembling and aching, shaking on her feet, but there's a clarity of purpose. Her mind is razor-sharp, keen-edged.

A whistling in the air and Ran ducks, swallows the reflexive _kiai_ , nearly chokes on it, pivoting on her right foot, bringing up her knee and snapping her leg out in a high roundhouse kick, making neat contact with the side of the person's head. A cry, and they crumple like paper. A baton falls from their gloved hand, clatters to the floor, the dark material standing out against the off-white terrazzo. If it had hit where it was meant to, it might have cracked her skull open.

Ran doesn't like hurting other people. It will never be in her nature. And she's glad. She doesn't understand how people can do it. But she will defend herself and those she loves to the death, if necessary.

She takes a deep breath, breathes it out slowly. Shinichi's grip on her is tight, cutting off her circulation, his nails digging into her skin, but the pain hardly even registers. She waits for a long moment, but nobody else follows.

"Ran," he says, voice awed.

She lets out a breathless laugh. "Yeah?"

He leans his face against the back of her neck again, buries it in her hair, but she can feel how hot it is. He must be blushing. The thought makes her blush too, and she bites her lip, grateful that he can't see it.

Adjusting her grip on Shinichi, who tightens his own when he figures out what she's trying to do, she leans down and searches the guard, grabbing a ring of keys and a keycard. Debating to herself a moment, she picks up the baton as well, giving it to Shinichi. There's a radio, but she ignores it.

And then—A SIG Sauer P226.

She recoils in disgust, then picks it up with two fingers by the grip, holding it upside down with its barrel pointed away when it's a little too heavy for her fingers alone. Ran doesn't like guns. No, that's too light of a descriptor. Ran _hates_ them. _Hates_ them. They're instruments of death. Their only purpose is to kill.

But he'd gone after her with the baton, which maybe means they're still not trying to kill her, regardless of how much force he'd put in that swing. But they'd shot Shinichi. Ugh, this is hurting her head. Ultimately, she chalks it up to the brutality of the clear liquor men. She still doesn't know which one is Gin and which one is Vodka.

She makes sure the slide catch is still on, then she tucks it in one of the pockets of the maintenance coveralls, not sure what else to do with it. She can't just leave it here for someone else to use it.

"Guards usually work in twos," Shinichi says, voice barely audible. "To cover blind spots. Where's his partner?"

As if in answer, he turns down the far corner of the hall, about ten meters away. There's nowhere really for Ran to go, nowhere for her to hide, so she tightens her grip on Shinichi and charges like a bull.

He barely has time to bring up his gun before she shoves her shoulder into his side, knocking him down. He doesn't go down as cleanly as his friend did, and he's already back up before Ran can catch her breath, grabbing for her. She jukes to the side, he grabs her by the hair, pulls her roughly to his face snarling. She'd free herself, but she's still holding on to Conan—she jerks her head away from his face to headbutt his nose, but before she can—

The sound of something cutting through the air, whistling past her ear. A loud _thunk_.

The man falls like a sack of potatoes.

Shinichi shifts, grinning, having used all of his strength to clobber the man in the head. "Heh. I'm not totally useless."

Ran shakes her head. "Far from it. Now let's get to that lab."

"The sooner the better," Shinichi agrees.

Thirty-nine minutes.


	14. R E C K O N

In the end, they leave the guards on the floor.

Ran strips the second guard like she strips the first one. She attempts to pull him from the middle of the hall, but she doesn't have the strength. Already the maintenance coveralls she's wearing are pooling at her feet, even as rolled up as they are.

She bounces experimentally, wincing as the movement jostles her aching joints. She doesn't feel like she's shrinking any farther, but the length of the leg fabric doesn't lie. Biting her cracked lip, she takes the second guard's keycard and gives it to Shinichi, who accepts it with wordless thanks. She looks around, finding the red blinking dot of a camera trained directly on them.

The cameras have certainly caught them, but there's still no sign of an alarm. Could Vermouth have done something to them? It's something to think about as the clock ticks down, inexorable in its cruelty. Thirty-eight minutes.

One hour whispered directly to Ran can mean a whole host of things, and each one curls at the bottom of Ran's stomach, fraying her nerves until she's hanging by a thread just thinking about it. The cameras, Shinichi wanting access to the data….how much does she know? And what does Shinichi mean "with Vermouth, it's hard to tell?" The woman is manipulating them, this Ran knows, but why? What purpose does it serve? And that gentle hand stroking her brow...Ran is certain now that she didn't imagine it. But what does it mean?

Behind her, shifting in her arms, she hears Shinichi's loud, rattling breathing. He doesn't sound too good, and it reminds her all too well that they're running out of time. "Ran? You okay?" he says.

Her face is numbing from exhaustion. "Just taking a moment. Let's go." She's tired, stretched to the very edge of her limit, but she can't stop now. She can't rest now. Not until they have what they came for and they're both out and safe. She'll rest if—no, when—they get out of this. They've already been in so much danger. Could still lose each other before the night is over.

Ran loves him. Ran knows he loves her. She doesn't care if it's not usually how it's done. If they make it out alive, she's going to ask him out. They've already been through so much, and if she does lose him, she wants it to have mattered. They've wasted so much time dancing around each other, time they could have been spending together. No more. Not if she has her say.

"We can rest for a bit, if you need to," he says. No, she really, really can't afford to take the time. She's not going to be the reason they get caught again. With that thought, she moves with purpose down the hall, looking for the door that calls to her.

She licks her chapped lips. "Which door?"

Ran keeps walking down the hall as Shinichi is quiet for a long moment. "I don't know," he says, and his voice is very small. They'll have to choose very carefully. Though the guards have been taken out, Shinichi is probably right in his assessment of how these people work; any number of these doors can hold scientists, more people with liquor in their names. Even if they do manage to luck out and find a room empty of people, there's no guarantee that it will hold a terminal Shinichi can use to access the data.

But they won't make any progress being indecisive, so Ran takes a deep breath, in and out. She does it again, again, calming herself, ignoring the pain, focusing on the tingling numbness of her face, on the feeling of Shinichi's rapid heartbeat against her back. His head is down, and leaned against her shoulder. She's almost afraid he's lost consciousness again. He won't be of any help, not in his current state.

If she were Holmes, if Shinichi wasn't drugged, which door would they choose?

She reassesses the hall, feeling vulnerable being out in the open where anyone can spot her at any time. She bites her lip again, making a soft noise as it starts to bleed.

Well, the doors all look the same. They're numbered, but there's nothing particularly odd about that. Even numbers on the right, odd numbers on the left. No directions, no place markers on the wall save the ubiquitous level four painted in white on a green backdrop.

Like the first floor, there's a door with a biohazard sign. But that could be where the experiments happened, not where the information about said experiments is necessarily kept. In fact, it might not make any sense to keep them there, especially if some biological contaminant were to escape. It might make it harder to retrieve the data. If it were her, she'd want the room to be close by. Any farther away, and it might be an inconvenience. If the elevator is at the far end of the hall, and the biohazard marked door is at the other end of the hall near the staircases, then it maybe it is one of those three doors next to it.

Is her logic sound? She doesn't know. Ran has to make the right choice. She's got to give Shinichi enough time to find and get the data.

Sharp intense pain shoots through her, making her loosen her grip on Shinichi, nearly bringing her to her knees. She works her jaw; it takes all her strength to keep standing, not to give anything away to him. The pain settles in her heart, and it almost feels like it's bursting. She regulates her breathing, rides through the pain. It's hard, but she's had worse menstrual cramps. She's running out of time. The guards could wake up at any moment.

Think, Ran, she says to herself. Shinichi would have already have figured it out. No. She can't compare herself to him. He's depending on her. She can't let him down. She can't let herself down. She owes it to her father. What would her father think if he lost her? Her mother? All their family? Their friends?

They're all depending on her.

She adjusts Shinichi again, his head lolling. Oh, that's not good. She's running out of time in more ways than one.

Think, Ran. Think! Her eyes flit up and down the hall. There's a solution, she knows there is. It would take too long to check each and every room, not with the threat of more operatives out to get them.

Suddenly, her eyes catch the camera focused on her. That's right. There are six CCTV cameras in this portion of the hallway, each covering the other's blind spots, moving in a pattern.

All save one, focusing on the door across from the biohazard placard. She walks down the hall to it, each step agony. She shifts Shinichi up, grabs the keycard, swipes it through, types in the password—still 394869—and she's in.

She was right. It's empty, but dimly lit with emergency lights, and filled with several computers and workstations. It looks promising.

Thirty-two minutes.


	15. R E B O O T

Ran shuts the door behind her, hitching Shinichi farther up her back as she makes her way to the computers.

"Shinichi," Ran says, shifting him to her hip as she stands in front of the terminal given the place of honour, surrounded by all sorts of graphs and technological things she can't even begin to understand.

There's no response.

"Shinichi, wake up. She pats him on the face, putting a little force behind it so it's almost a slap. He blinks up at her, eyes unfocused, and his head falls back on her shoulder.

"Shinichi," she says a little more firmly. "I need you to wake up."

Still no response.

Hand in front of his mouth and nose. He's still breathing, though for how much longer she can't say. "Shinichi, wake up!" she says in her sharpest tone, and he jerks forward, startling awake.

"Ran," he says, slurring. "Where are—?"

"The data?" she says, and if he was still a little drowsy before, then those words have the effect of instantly bringing him to full consciousness.

"We're here? Already?" he says, attempting to blink the sleep away from his eyes.

"I don't know," Ran says. "Can you get something out of this?" she says, gesturing to the computer, black and sleek, screensaver dark with ominous red lines. She doesn't like this room. There's something about it that seems hungry.

Twenty-five minutes left, now. Waking Shinichi up took precious time.

"I-I can try," Shinichi says, and he motions towards the chair. Ran sets him down in the swivel chair, and abruptly his fingers fly across the keyboard. The light makes his eyes shine, the glare from the screen reflected in them. He types out a password, fails twice, but on the third try, he's in.

She can't follow most of what he's doing. Searches, specific data links, names, numbers, symbols she has no ideas of the significance of. He parses them like it's nothing, and she can't help but feel a little awed at how quickly, how efficiently he pages through.

Shinichi inhales sharply as he clicks on a file deep in a set of folders, almost buried. He brings up a web browser, then curses under his breath. "Closed network," he mutters. "Of course. Ran," he says, and she jumps. "See if you can find something I can use to carry the data. There may be a workaround, but—"

And he's off in his own little world again, focusing on nothing but the monitor in front of him. Leaving him to his work, Ran takes the opportunity to peruse the room.

It's a state-of-the-art lab. Everything appears shiny, new, top-of-the-line, at least to Ran's untrained eye. She picks up a book from the shelf, cracks it open. It's filled with handwritten notes written in chicken-scratch rough pen on the margins. The text itself contains dense jargon, long strings of chemicals she couldn't even begin to decode. She closes it and places it back on the shelf.

She checks the drawers underneath. They're filled with miscellaneous office supplies, but nothing she can really use. Nothing Shinichi can use to transport the data to Ai. Near far end of the room, past the bookshelves, are a set of lockers. They don't have combinations, just places to put locks. She opens one, finding a woman's change of clothes and a lab coat. Madeira. She wrinkles her nose. The second one is empty.

The third though, that's where things get interesting. Ran finds her clothes in clear bags, neatly labeled. Shinichi's too. Shirt, jeans. Even his coat, free from the bloodstains the bullet gave it, fabric neatly sewn. It won't fit him, small as he is, but it suits her just fine. She shrugs it on, and while it's baggy, it's warm in the cold room and better than nothing.

Wallets, keys, mobile phones, everything's there. Her handbag. Mobile phones, three of them. Their ticket to freedom.

 _Mobile phones!_

Ran shakes her head. It's too much of a coincidence. She doesn't trust it. Still, she flips hers open, attempting to power it on. No juice. She lets out a heavy sigh, not surprised. She tries one of Shinichi's, the one she hasn't seen him use. Hmm. One phone for each identity, has to be. It is a brand new model smartphone, perfectly capable of becoming a mobile hotspot.

It's dead, too. She tries powering up the last device, but it's the same as the previous two.

It hurts. They were so close! She hits the locker out of frustration, then checks the next two. The one on the far end has a satchel. This she uses to stuff their belongings in. She slings it over her shoulder, then heads back to the terminal Shinichi's using.

"WIll this work?" She asks him, handing him the smartphone.

His eyes are wide. "This was here?" he asks, concerned.

Yeah. Ran knows exactly how he feels. "Never mind that. It's dead. Can you get it to work?" Maybe it'll explode and kill them, but Ran doesn't think so. Even with the mysterious help, it's been a struggle to get even this far. She's said it before. She'll take what she can get.

Shinichi shakes himself. "Yeah," he says, and he grabs some kind of wire, stripping it with a pair of scissors. He pops his phone battery out, manoeuvres it around, and attaches it to some kind of makeshift powerpack he made from one of the computer peripherals, plugging the USB into the port. That done, he lets it sit for a moment while he goes back to messing with the files on the computer.

Ran feels a wave of heat flush through her, and she staggers, falling against the desk. The ache in her own bones throbs, starting deep inside and radiating outward, focusing on her sternum. The pain pulses with every heartbeat.

She rides through it, regulating her breathing. Pain management is easy. This is no different from what she's been doing since she's woken up. But it's different somehow, stronger.

Ran falls to the floor, hand clutching her heart."Ran!" Shinichi cries out in a panic

She curls in on herself. _Am I dying_? she wonders.

Thirteen minutes.


	16. R E A G I N

Ran doesn't scream.

She refuses. Instead, she clenches her teeth, shivering. Her bones are on fire, feeling like they are literally melting inside her body. It hurts. It hurts so much it leaves her shaking and gasping for air.

Shinichi has hopped from his chair and kneels by her side, looking like a strong gust of wind could blow him over. He grabs her hand, links their fingers together.

His hands are so small. He needs to focus on retrieving the data instead of her. She doesn't want these risks to be pointless. No, she refuses to let them be pointless.

"Ran!" He cries out, helpless. His other hand is on her upper arm. It feels like ice against the heat burning her from the inside.

She smiles through the pain. It probably looks more like a pained grimace, but oh well. She's trying. "G-get the data," she urges him. "That's why we're here, isn't it?" Another wave hits her and she curls further in on herself, her body's involuntary attempt to avoid pain it has no way of escaping.

"But Ran, you're—What did they do to you?" Shinichi asks. He's staring at their hands, really staring. Her own dwarfed his, once. Now they're only a few centimeters longer, and she watches the dawning horror grow on his face as he realizes what's happening.

"You're the detective," Ran teases, though no amount of trying can take away the pained thread in her voice. "You tell me." Oh, her _everything_ hurts.

"She did it," Shinichi breathes. "The apotoxin." He grips her hand tighter. "That stupid idiot scientist actually created another viable formula."

"Yeah?" Ran says, panting as another wave hits her. "C'mon. Do what you came here to do," she says. "We're running out of time."

"But—"

"Distract me. Tell me about what you've found." Ran says, and it's a plea.

Shinichi stands up, his small fists clenched at his side. He stares at her a long moment, then turns, sitting back it the chair. His fingers fly across the keyboard as he collates the data. "That's what that weird digression meant." Ran focuses on her breathing, letting Shinichi's words wash over her. "They used my blood in the development of the new prototype. The original apotoxin was never meant to be a poison."

"What," a deep breath, "What was it meant to do?" Ran asks. The pain has dulled a bit now that she's concentrating on her breathing.

"I don't know if I believe it," Shinichi says. "It's almost too fantastic."

"Any more fantastic than shrinking?" Ran asks.

"You have a point," Shinichi admits, fingers clacking against the keyboard, interspersed with the occasional clicking of the mouse. "But it doesn't matter what they were trying to do. What matters it what it actually does. Your file is in here, too. Everything makes sense now."

"They took my blood," Ran says. "It makes sense I'd have a file." She feels well enough to sit up, though her legs are too shaky to stand. She leans against a cupboard, legs splayed out to the side, Shinichi's jacket loose. Absently, she rolls up those arms too. She looks down at her thin arms, the barest hint of breasts budding underneath her maintenance coveralls. She frowns. Going through puberty again doesn't sound like much fun.

"Yeah," Shinichi says. "That's actually part of the breakthrough. They have the markers, both before and after the introduction of the apotoxin formula to your system." Rapid clicking. "It looks like they derived the appropriate response from comparing the two, since they didn't have my blood before the apotoxin on file."

"What?"

"Basically, those that can survive the first dose carry a certain type of antibody that is set off by one of the compounds in a successful prototype. We're hypersensitive to it, and it causes our body to react in extreme. In most people, the compound rewrites the structure and triggers apoptosis of the cells, leading to a sudden and painful death, but in people with this reagin, it actually triggers a reversal of certain cell scripts. I'm talking nucleic acid protein level here. That's why Haibara's antidotes are temporary, and work less efficiently each time I take a dose. I'm building up an immune response. They block the antibody from being produced for a short time, but don't actually target the specific set of reactions, treating the symptom rather than the problem."

Ran thinks about it for a moment. "So it's an allergic reaction?"

"Essentially. A proper cure would involve rewriting specific genetic structure," he taps the letters and lines and numbers on the screen that may as well be a foreign language for how easily Ran can interpret them. "If she can find the right protein…the temporary antidotes do mean she is close."

"The immune system is working overtime. That's why you get sick so easily as Conan." Ran says. She still doesn't understand it, but she trusts he knows what he's talking about. She braces herself against the cupboards as another wave of pain floods through her. It takes everything in her not to cry out.

"One reason, yes. And for this effect to be isolated and spread, they need that reagin. They used my blood and information from an older project under the name S. B. You were the test case," Shinichi says. "They don't have it perfected. I'd thought something was going on when they took my blood, but," he rubs at his eyes. He's slumped over the desk, looking like it takes herculean effort to even sit up.

"Eight minutes, Shinichi," she says through gritted teeth. She's crumbling, falling to pieces as her bones liquefy, her heart explodes. He voice is higher now. A lot higher.

He nods, turns his mobile on, sets up the hot spot. They do have service, but the charge is on something like seven percent. Shinichi turns on the hotspot, connecting the computer easily, pulls up the browser. He attaches the files, types in seven email addresses before accessing a cloud storage and uploading them there too. It takes long agonizing minutes before he's able to send them, but he does before the phone dies.

Then he sends a text before powering it off.

"Not 110?" she says, sounding positively squeaky. She rolls up her sleeves and legs even farther before digging through the bag and handing Shinichi's shirt to him. He slips it on. It's better than the towel, fitting him like a small dress. She takes off his jacket and tries to hand it to him, but he waves it away, helping her put it back on.

"Heh," Shinichi says. "Like they'd believe a couple of kids. Besides, since I used the mobile service, they'll be able to find me through GPS. Dad will know what to do."

"Yeah," Ran says. "Two minutes. We need to go."

"We won't make it out in time," Shinichi says. "Did you see the date? It's been a little over a week."

"A week," she says in wonder. "Just that? It feels like forever."

"Yeah," Shinichi says. "Ran, listen, before we go I—"

"Willyougooutwithme?" Ran blurts out, speaking over him.

"What?" Shinichi says, eyes wide.

"Will you go out with me," Ran asks, looking down, face flaming.

"I was just about to ask you," Shincihi says, and he sounds petulant. Serves him right!

Ran jerks her head up. "Well, you sure were taking your sweet time about it," Ran says, huffing. "If I waited on you to ask, we'd be here until we were grown up again!" Ran puts her hand on her hips.

"Hey, hey!" Shinichi tries to protest, but Ran isn't having any of it.

"Will you go out with me or not?" she asks, leaning forward. She's taller than him, just a little, exactly like when they were kids before.

He scratches the back of his head, looking away, cheeks a deep, deep red. "Yeah, I will."

"Great!" she says, then wraps her arms around him, hugging him tightly. He stiffens, then his arms come down around her too.

Then, before they can separate, an alarm starts blaring.


	17. R E F U S E

So that's what Vermouth's mysterious words meant. One hour before the alarm sounded. A grace period. At what cost?

If Shinichi had listened to Ran, they'd already be long gone, but now that Ran's experienced it too, she definitely understands his desire to return to his former self. Everything feels so off. So unusual, like the world is too big. She misses her full self already. She's having to get used to new, shorter limbs, and it's murder on her balance. She doesn't even want to think about how it's affected her karate.

They're very vulnerable as small as they are. Ran refuses to let that stop her.

Ran looks six or seven, and while her body still hurts, aches deep in her bones, it feels so much better than that agonizing in between state where her body was unsure what to do.

Shinichi's clinging to her tightly, his grip almost painful.

She has to remind herself that even though he's seemed invincible in the past, he isn't. Not really. He's just a person that makes faults and errors in judgements and mistakes. He's only human.

Not that she really thinks that going for the data was an error in judgement. It was a calculated risk. And while Shinichi is prone to not thinking when it comes to himself, he's never been cavalier about her safety. **Ever**.

She feels close to him like this. Closer than she ever has in a long time. Like the vast distance between them has been erased. That makes her brave enough to kiss his cheek.

He holds his hand up to his cheek, "Ran," he says, and his stunned voice sounds out even above the high-low screaming of the alarm. His face is red, really red. It's cute.

"Let's make it out of here together," Ran says, tucking her hands behind her and beaming, rocking forward on her feet.

"Y-yeah," Shinichi says, and he reaches out and grabs her hand, squeezing her fingers gently. Then, for the first time since she rescued him from that lab slab, that fierce grin she loves so much spreads across his face. "Let's get out of here!"

"Mhmm!" she says, bobbing her head.

But it's one thing to say it, and another thing to do it.

Ran tightens the grip on the strap around her middle with her free hand. Both the bag and her hair are nearly touching the floor, probably affecting her mobility. She glances back at at the scissors on the desk, takes a deep breath. She grabs them, stuffs them in the much beleaguered bag. Now she'll have them if she needs to cut her hair. Call it vanity, but she can't quite bring herself to do it just yet.

Ran and Shinichi edge out into the hallway, hands still clasped together, slow and careful. Nothing. The alarm is still blaring, lights are still flashing. They edge slowly towards the staircases on the closer end of the hall, neither one of them wanting to get caught in the glorified cage that was an elevator.

There's no one. That scares Ran more than if there had been someone there. She wraps both of her arms against one of Shinichi's, leaning against him, hiding her face against his shoulder.

Beside her, Shinichi sniffs the air.

"What are you doing?" Ran asks.

"When Haibara ran, they burnt her lab down. It was disguised as an accident," he says, face hard. They didn't want her leaking anything to the police. They're pretty ruthless about not leaving a trace." Shinichi said. "And—" he hesitates. "The back door, the program she gave me to bypass the virus…"

"The virus?" That explains why he kept it hidden from her. Ran knows very personally how ruthless they can be.

"Mm. The one called Night Baron. It corrupted the disk she had because it was accessed away from the organization's computers. They have some pretty heavy hitters as far as cyberwarfare goes, very technologically oriented," he taps his chin. "She created a workaround, but it almost makes me wonder," he began, trailing off.

"Wonder what?" Yes. There had been the Izu retreat with Dr. Agasa. It wasn't the first time Ran had heard of it, either.

Shinichi shakes his head. "Nothing to worry about. I'm probably overthinking things."

That almost sounds like he thinks …no.

But then there is no time to think at all. The elevator opens and a storm of people in black vests rush out, at least a dozen.

"No fire, but here come the cavalry!" Shinichi says.

"Ideas?" she asks, feet hip width apart as she takes a ready stance. Not that there's going to be much help; each one of these people probably have at least fifty kilos on her, and at around thirty-five kilos (and that's probably being generous) it's going to take more than a running jump to knock them down. Training can only account for so much. "No chance the stairs are free?" she knows even as she asks they're not; she can hear them coming up the stairs, thundering like a summer storm.

"No way," Shinichi says. "But if you never enter the tiger's den…"

"You'll never catch its cub," Ran finishes, and she's already running down the hall, pushing her aching body to the limit. He may not be a fighter like she is, but he is intelligent, and Ran knows he's already deduced their biggest assets right now are their size and the number of opponents, and with two of them to focus on, it means it divides their attention roughly in half.

Small means quick. Short means access to sensitive and unprotected areas. And while such a crippling move is nothing she'd do officially, they're not going to play fair. If even one of them manages to catch one of them, it's all over.

It's with this in mind that she lashes out, kicking the closest goon in the side of the knee hard enough she can feel it shift. She hears the crack as he goes down hard, and it makes her sick enough bile rises to the back of her throat, but she's already moving to the next one. They'll grow smart, and they need to be long gone by the time they organize. They can't let them form any kind of coherent attack force.

It's not something she would normally do. How far will she let her convictions slip? Already tears are forming in her eyes from anger. Anger at them for putting her in the position where she has to do this or die.

They're only lucky they still want them alive.

That could change at any second.


	18. R E V O L T

Still, how far is Ran willing to go?

In a situation like this, surrounded on all sides by the enemy, with not just her life on the line, how can she still hold to her convictions and survive?

All human life is precious. That's what Ran has always believed.

Never has she had that belief so sorely tested. She pivots, ducks a grab, kicks the back of the knee of another one of the men in black. He goes down with a dislocated knee.

The third one catches her, grabbing her by the hair and yanking her to eye level. It hurts, but she fights through the pain.

He's just made a big mistake. Her leg snaps out and she catches him on the temple with the full force of the ball of her foot. He staggers, and she lands on his head, clinging for dear life as he pounds at her body trying to get her off. She jabs her right thumb forward into the give of his eye, and with a sickening feeling like squishing a grape, the man screams, clutching at his face, dropping her hard to the floor. She lands flat on her back, wind knocked out of her.

She lies there, gasping, unable to breathe as he continues to scream in pain.

"Ran!" she thinks she can hear over the sound of thudding flesh and grunts and cries, but she can't let that distract her. She's got to trust Shinichi can take care of himself on his own.

Ran thinks she's going to be sick. Her hand is covered in blood, and she feels faint. She rolls over and retches, wiping her mouth with the back of her left hand after she's finished heaving. As she jumps up, her legs can barely hold her weight they're trembling so much. She takes a brief moment to twist her hair, knotting it at the very end with shaking hands.

Two men are moving towards her in a pincer-like movement. She catches sight of the blood on her hand and arm and is almost sick again. No, there's no time for that. She crouches low, eyes flickering from man to man. She takes a deep, rattling breath.

Then she's running. She trips the first man with a low sweep, causing him to fall into his partner. She slaps his ear as hard as she can open-palmed, aiming to upset his balance, and brings her foot down on his groin for good measure. The second man dodges, but she's already circled around and leapt on his back. It takes just a moment to use one hand to bring the full-length of her hair around his throat. She holds it at the knot and about forty centimeters up, hanging herself from his throat by her hair. She uses her weight to give her the strength she needs, and after a long moment, the man staggers to his knees, clawing at his throat.

She's unrelenting and manages to make the man pass out just as his partner is getting up. She brushes her hair out of her face, leaving a wide streak of blood across her cheek.

Ran wants to cry. She's tired, sore, trembling. Her heart hurts and even adrenaline isn't doing much at this point to keep her moving. It's hard to breathe. The world is spinning. She's got a man's blood on her hands. She's permanently crippled at least three people, and that one man could bleed out. If he dies, it will be her fault.

Ran _hurts_.

She leaps at the man, knocking him back down, and jabs her fingers underneath his ears in a blood choke. He's still disoriented, and it doesn't take him long to succumb.

Ran's _tired_.

She rocks back on her heels, rubbing at her eyes, looking around. Between her and Shinichi, every aggressor is out cold or won't be getting up anytime soon.

They won, but not without cost. Like a magnet, her eyes zero in on Shinichi, sitting down, leaned back against the wall. He's bleeding from a busted nose and a cut on his brow, and he has a swelling black eye. He's surrounded by bodies, and the door to the stairwell has been jammed with the fire ax. Probably Shinichi's doing. People are pounding on it and it won't be so long until they break through.

"Shinichi!" she cries, stumble-running towards him and nearly tripping over her own feet. She grabs the sides of his head with her hands and presses her forehead against his. He leans into the touch.

"Ran," he says her name like a prayer. "You were brilliant." He takes her hand, presses her palm against his lips before letting go.

"Don't say that like you're about to die, idiot," Ran says, but there are tears in her eyes.

He gestures to his leg. "My ankle won't bear my weight. You need to go. I can hold them off."

"It's not like you to give up so easily," Ran says. "What's gotten into you? I wasn't going to leave you behind before. What makes you think I'm going to leave you behind now?"

Shinichi moves, or he tries to, and his face contorts into a grimace. He laughs, clutching his side, breathless and pained. "Thought it was worth a try. You're so stubborn." He reaches up, runs his hand through her hair. "That's what I love about you." His hand falls, trailing her cheek, and he wipes away her tears.

"Love?" she teases.

"Yeah," he says, and he pulls that disgruntled face, the one he uses when he's embarrassed. Ran finds it absurdly cute.

Then Shinichi's good eye widens, and he presses himself back against the wall, rapidly paling. It's fear he's showing now. Shinichi's fingers dig hard into her arms, leaving marks behind. He's deathly afraid.

Ran turns.

It's the silver-blond-haired man in black. The one from the Mystery Coaster. The one in the alleyway outside of the restaurant. The one with dead eyes who finds cruelty a pleasure.

"Gin," Shinichi breathes.

So that's his name.


	19. R E A P E R

"How sentimental," says a voice laced with scorn.

Ran stands up, still shaky but solid, Shinichi clutching her arm. Her heart's racing. Her bones ache, but she places herself in front of Shinichi, hiding him.

Not that it will do much, but it makes her feel better to block him from the man's line of sight.

"You," he growls, venom positively dripping as he shapes the words.

"Me," she says, rabbit heart racing in her ears. So this is Gin. That makes the other man Vodka.

Ran had been too distracted to notice beyond a subconscious level during her first encounter, but the way he moves is full of feline grace. He picks through the groaning men like its bare floor, avoiding even the blood. It's effortless. He doesn't even look down.

"You're almost more trouble than you're worth," he says.

"You aren't the first to tell me that," Ran says, shifting as she moves to block Shinichi more fully.

"Still," he licks his lips, tongue lingering on the tip of one sharp canine. His eyes flicker to the knocked out man whose eye she ruined, still bleeding sluggishly, then back to her bloodstained hand. "Wouldn't have pegged you for the type. That's downright vicious." He grins wickedly. He sounds pleased.

Ran refuses to wince, but she feels the urge to vomit rise back up. Approval from this man. Horrifying. She stares him right in the eye. She will not let him intimidate her. She knows what she did, and she did it with full awareness of the consequences.

"Resourceful. Tough. Smart," he continues. "Too smart for your own good. Too bad you threw in with the wrong lot," he says. "We could use someone with your…tenacity."

"What do you want?" Ran demands. There has to be a reason he hasn't killed them yet.

"We have another rat," the silver-blond man says, pulling out a pistol, twirling it around his finger before popping the slide catch. It's not a model she recognizes. "That's the thing about rats; they breed quickly. You kill one, two more pop up in its place."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Ran says. It's no lie. She has every confidence she doesn't know about anyone other than Sherry and Vermouth. And Shinichi said Vermouth was on her own side. That's not technically a lie.

"You don't. He does," Gin sneers.

Ran feels oddly calm, as she takes a deep breath. The panic has disappeared. She's beyond fear, now. "You're not going to touch him," she says. She knows it with certainty. Through her very _soul_.

"Who's going to stop me? You?" he laughs.

"Yes," Ran says. Her voice is pleasant, even.

"I'm not afraid of a little girl."

Ran narrows her eyes. "You should be."

He doesn't answer.

Instead he walks forward slowly. Unhurried. Hand still on his gun. It's a casual display of how comfortable he is with violence. How little of a threat they appear to be to him.

Ran doesn't shrink back. She is a little distracted by Shinichi tugging at the pocket of her coveralls, though. He's been silent other than the utterance of Gin's name. Ran doesn't think she's ever seen him paralyzed with fear like this, but it's hard to tell without seeing his facial expressions, body language.

"Where's the other one?" Ran asks. "Where's Vodka? You never seem to be without him."

He doesn't answer. She didn't expect him to.

She's tired, she's sore, she's cold, she's hurting, she's absolutely emotionally wrecked.

Two more steps and she'll be in range of his arms. Shinichi is against the wall. The bag containing their clothes and phones is at her feet, useless and heavy. She bites her battered lip, only to gag when she tastes the copper of the man's blood.

She takes a deep breath, faking a stumble and pulling the scissors out of the bag, sliding them up the sleeve of Shinichi's jacket. She takes another one and runs towards him. He doesn't even bring up the gun, looking at her with nothing more than amusement. She tackles his leg, but he takes a step back, moving easily with it.

Oh, who is she kidding? She couldn't take him down when she was at her top form, much less exhausted and sore and _tiny_. He picks her up by her collar, jerking the jacket underneath her armpits, tossing her to the side like so much rubbish. She lands on one of his unconscious men, and that's when she realizes he doesn't even care about them.

She's not even worth killing. Less than an insect. Not when he has far better prey in sight.

Still, that makes Shinichi cry out, "Ran! You okay?"

"How did you think this would end, boy?" Gin smiles, nothing but teeth, and far too close to Shinichi for her comfort. "You couldn't possibly think you ever had a chance." He shakes his head. "Nothing but trouble, you are."

Far, far too close. "I'm looking forward to this. You've been a nosy little problem for far too long." He brings up the gun, aims it at Shinichi. "This time when I kill you, I'm going to make sure it sticks."

There's no time. Ran palms the scissors, jumps to her feet, runs at him as he levels the gun to Shinichi's chest.

She's bringing up the scissors to stab him in eye, leaps on his back. He turns, lets out a foul curse, then drops the gun so he can take hold of her and slam her into the wall. Then he has his hand wrapped around her throat, squeezing as she claws, bites, and kicks at him futilely. He pulls out a knife from an inner pocket of his black duster, presses it against her throat. It won't take her much to lean forward, jab the scissors in his eye and towards his brain. He's underestimated her, and she's gotten out of tougher holds. She just has to hit his elbow.

"Hey, bastard!" Shinichi shouts. Gin turns, sliding the knife against Ran's throat in surprise, causing a little bit of blood to trickle down as he slices the outer layer of skin.

It's like slow motion.

Shinichi's holding the SIG Sauer Ran pilfered from the guard in both hands. He pulls the trigger, and it pushes his small body back; The gun cracks, full and hot and loud barrel pointed up from the recoil. The muzzle is smoking, and Shinichi's face is hard, his eyes blank, his aim unerring.

An eternity passes before it nets Gin right between the eyes, and the man goes flying back, Ran dropping to the floor again for the second time in as many moments. Red stains his silver-blond hair. His eyes are wide open. His face is caught in a rictus of anger.

He falls, falls, falls to the ground with a dull thud. Somehow, it's the loudest thing either one of them have ever heard.

Shinichi lets out a shuddering gasp, dropping the gun, almost throwing it away as if it's scalded him. Ran rushes to his side. "H-he would have kept coming," Shinichi says, stumbling over his words, "He always kept coming," he tries to explain.

Ran loops the bag around her, keeps the scissors in her palm. "I know, Shinichi," Ran says, moving him around so she can crouch under him, put him on her back. "I know. I'm sorry." As she lifts him up, he clings to her for dear life.

But deep in the very bottom of her heart, she knows why he did it. He'd already calculated her actions before she'd even moved, known what she was going to do with the scissors before she had known it herself.

Shinichi, the detective who despises the careless loss of life, has killed him so Ran wouldn't have to.


	20. R E P U G N

Long after it's over, the gunshot still echoes in her mind.

She hears it repeating in an incessant loop. Ran trudges through the hall, silent save for the banging against the door in the stairwell. The wood of the fire axe's handle is cracking, just a little, and she makes it to the elevator, pressing the button for the third floor, desperately hoping there are no more setbacks.

Like their pursuers reaching the ground floor before they do.

It's not ideal, carrying Shinichi like this, with his ankle dangling downward, not with his foot injured, but it's the only way she can at the size she's at. He's heavy, but she has no choice.

Ran doesn't think she can go through that again. Not the fight, not the killing, not any of it. Shinichi shot Gin to protect her, but at what cost? She shifts him a little higher on her back.

And can they stop at just one? Is it really feasible, once they've crossed that line to never cross it again? How easy it is to justify a murder. How simple it is to take a human life. How well it prevents an enemy from coming after them again.

Everything feels unreal, like she's outside herself watching herself. Like she will float away if she doesn't have Shinichi to hold on to.

Her grip on Shinichi tightens. She opens her mouth.

"Ran," Shinichi says, hoarse and quiet. "You okay?" he says before she can speak.

"Shouldn't I be the one asking you that?" she retorts. People kill for a variety of reasons, and most claim it is justified when they commit the murder. Shinichi's job, her father's job, is to unravel these reasons, to poke at the flaws in the method and the motive until one truth comes to light. "Neither one of us is okay."

There's no room in those cold black-and-white deductions for the grey of a struggle between two people. When is a murder not a murder? When it's in the defense of a loved one? When killing one person will prevent the deaths of many?

"No, but we're alive," he says, and his voice wavers, but they both ignore the catch.

"Yeah," she says, but her voice is low, her throat swollen, and it takes too much effort to raise it beyond much of a whisper.

"Despite everything," Shinichi says.

"Despite everything," Ran agrees, still with that strange lump in her throat. She wishes she could see his face, feel more than the brush of his cheek against hers. She looks down. Her hair is a filthy, tangled, blood-soaked knotted mess, and she despairs of ever getting it clean. Something to worry about if they live, maybe.

A long silence. Ran almost wishes for elevator music to break it. Do the means justify the end? Is intent, the desire to protect, enough to lighten such a dark deed? Ran has no excuse. She had known exactly what she was going to do when she grabbed those scissors, had already visualized the end result in vivid detail, had already calculated the risks and returns and considered Shinichi's life more important than someone who murdered with ease.

"Ran," Shinichi says, and his voice is serious. Far more serious than she's ever heard him.

"Hmm?" she answers absently.

How do you weigh a life? On its merits? Comparing it to others? Can it even be judged objectively, without bias?

All human life is precious. That's what Ran has always believed. Never before has she considered that mindset might be naïveté, considering who these people are: those who live and breathe and deal in murder, those for whom causing pain is a comfort.

That kind of thinking is a luxury for those who have never had to make a choice. Even before, somehow it had managed end up okay, what with the serial killer. What makes this different? The fact the odds are so greatly against them? That Shinichi would have died if she hadn't tried to kill Gin? That she might have died if Shinichi hadn't shot him instead?

When is a murder not a murder? She thinks the answer is never. It's still a murder, and there's a price to be paid. She only hopes they both can afford it.

"Ran!" Shinichi says again, voice sharp.

She jerks her head up. "Wha?" she says, startled.

"The elevator's stopped. We're back where we started," he says, and it's rare to hear his voice this gentle.

"Oh, right," she says, blinking her eyes hard, hard enough they water. They leave the elevator. It's the floor they started on, but it's not the bottom floor. There are four lifts on this level, and at least two of them lead up. Ran doesn't know why, but she checks each one, looking for the ever illusive ground floor. She doesn't want to chance the stairwell. She's afraid she'll hear the pounding of that door in her nightmares. She uses the guard's keycard to go through a door to another elevator offset, and lets out a sigh of relief when she sees the button leading to the exit. _Finally_.

"Are you sure you're all right?" he asks, worried, like his face isn't black and blue, like he's able to walk. Like he's not suffering just as much as she is.

"I have to be," is all she says. Because it's true.

"You're so brave," Shinichi says, clinging to her shoulders more tightly.

"You protected me," she says.

"You _saved_ me," Shinichi corrects. "There's so much I haven't told you, and—"

Ran hmms. "I thought I'd lost you that night. That I'd never see you again. Then each time I saw you after that, it seemed you were always running away from me, like you were leaving me behind."

"I didn't want to."

"I know! don't think I could bear it, Shinichi. If anything ever happened to you, I couldn't stand it. There's so much we haven't talked about, that we need to talk about, and we may not get a chance, and just—"

"I know, Ran, I know."

"It's hard," Ran says. "It shouldn't be this hard."

"No, it shouldn't. But we're not the ones who get to make that choice. No one does. Navigating these rough waters on this ocean called life; that's how you live," Shinichi says. "Through one storm at a time."

"You were dying in my arms," she says. "For a moment, I thought you were dead. It can't," her voice falters. "It can't end like this," she continues, her voice stronger.

"It won't," he reassures her. "We're already almost there," he says, and that's true enough.

The elevator opens to a generic lobby with upscale furniture and a nice help desk. All white and pristine and pleasant and clinical, hiding the horrors above and below. Ran sees a business card, and it's the name of a fairly popular pharmaceutical company. The rooms are the kind you'd see in a regular clinic, innocent-looking.

It's repugnant.

And then she sees a figure in black step out from the shadows.

Blond hair and brown skin, not hidden by a cap or glasses. Ran takes a step back, frozen in fear. She knows him. She hadn't thought about it since he threatened her with the knife, but that's Mr. Amuro. The server at Café Poirot. Ran thinks she's going to be sick. She takes another step back, grip on Shinichi slipping. She feels, she feels violated, she feels vulnerable, afraid. This man was in her house. This man had access to her father and friends and family and—

A wave of nausea and disgust bubbles up, and her eyes flicker wildly, looking for a way out, but he's blocking the only viable exit, and—

"So that's what you were hiding all along, huh?" the man says. "The famous high school detective. I knew something wasn't quite right about you. Hard to believe even seeing it with my own eyes, but everything makes sense now."

"Bourbon," Shinichi says right next to her ear, and he sounds _relieved_.

"You're just lucky she likes you," the man says, hands in his pockets. "Doubt you'd be so free otherwise, and well, it's not like any of my previous obligations have been countermanded, so," he leans against the wall. "The property's about half a mile, then a little bit past that is a road with a freeway exit. I'd suggest you hurry; backup's already on its way. You took your sweet time."

"You're not—" Shinichi begins.

"Technically, this is Gin's mess," he says, and he marks the way Shinichi flinches with a smile. He turns. "I was never here," he calls over his shoulder without looking back.

He does pause though, just for a moment, back still to them in the white hall. "They're not going to let you be, you know. Not anymore."

"I know," Shinichi says, voice grim.

And then Bourbon tosses his hand up in a careless wave, and fades into the darkness


	21. R E B E L S

Ran steps through the double doors, and out into freedom.

The cold wind blowing on her face feels _divine_ after a week or so of being trapped inside that stuffy building. She doesn't take the time to enjoy it; she can't. She's still freaked out about Mr. Amuro, or Bourbon, or whatever his name really is, she's not going to lie. He said backup would be coming, and it's both lucky and unlucky that the property is outside a metropolitan area, easy enough to tell by the prevalence of trees and lack of tall buildings. Lucky because they can disappear in it, unlucky because it will take some time to get to assistance.

…If they should even go back to their friends and family. Ran swallows, throat still a little sore as she quickly veers from the paved path deep into the forest. Almost immediately she decides against that course of action. They will be after the people they love whether or not she and Shinichi are there, and it's silly to think their absence would change anything. Ai, or Sherry or whoever—and that's really, really confusing, all these names and identities—would still be in danger, and her father, and Sonoko, and Sera, and Conan—Shinichi's—young friends, anyone Bourbon had ever seen them interact with, because whether or not he let them go here has no bearing on what he can do or who he reports to.

Shinichi sounded relieved, and that is enough for her. She trusts him enough, in things like this, even if she still is a little bit wary of matters of the heart.

The farther they go in the woods, the more she feels him slipping. She keeps adjusting him, but she's sore and he's really heavy. The silence of the night is a little creepy, and it's mostly dark with only the waning crescent moon and dull stars to keep them company.

"You can take time to rest, you know," Shinichi says.

Ran knows her body. She has to. It's the purview of any athlete, any martial artist doubly so. Even though she shrank, and she's still coming to terms with the balance, range, and movement of her body, she still knows it, and because she does, she's highly aware she's at a point beyond exhaustion, beyond endurance.

She doesn't know if Shinichi feels this bone-deep lingering ache every time he changes, or it's a product of the experiments she was forced through, but it's the least of what ails her. If she stops now, she might not be able to start moving again.

And wouldn't that be something? To fail at escaping, to lose their lives when they're so close to freedom she can taste it. Even though they're outside, they're not _out_ , not just yet.

And so she keeps moving. "I know," she says, and she attempts to sound bright and chipper, but it just comes out forced. "Do you need a coat? It's a little cold," she says. He's just out here in a shirt and a scrap of a towel. He has to be freezing. Ran has his coat and her thick coveralls, so she's fine, and she's also warm from the exercise. It's not terribly cold, about sixteen degrees Celsius, but it is cool enough to be uncomfortable.

She hears him take a breath, and then a "Yeah," reaches her ears. She pauses for a moment and digs in the bag for her light blue coat. She would give Shinichi his, but she is wearing it, and she doesn''t think she can put him down and be able to pick him back up again.

He accepts with a quiet thanks and doesn't even say anything about it being a girl's jacket, shrugging it on in an interesting balancing act. It makes something inside of her warm, and she smiles. They're wearing each other's clothes, and something about that feels special.

She really does love him. They'd do anything for each other, and that's why they have made it to this point. That's why they're alive right now. It's not that they need each other, exactly, or that love conquers all (though Ran admits she's very much a romantic and believes that it could). It's that they _get_ each other, in ways that only two people who know each other from the inside out do. It's about knowing someone, knowing all of them, the good and the bad, the best and the worst parts of them, and loving them anyway.

And sure, they argue, and he can be irritating at times, but honestly she wouldn't have it any other way, because it's _him_ , and it's wonderful because it is him.

A noise coming through the forest from the direction of the path has her pausing and hiding behind a tree.

"—I'm _bored,_ Korn," she hears a whine. "When's Gin going to call to signal us?" It's a woman's voice, coming from somewhere above her. In a tree? It's coming from the direction of the path. Ran is suddenly very glad she didn't decide to take it. A rattling breath is all she hears from Shinichi, but his head is leaned against her shoulder again, and she wonders if her slow plodding hasn't made him fall asleep.

He's not doing very well at all.

"He might not," says a voice, and this is a man's deeper voice, it crackles, as if coming from a carelessly discarded two-way. Ran frowns. Shouldn't they have earbuds, or some kind of special radio? She shouldn't be able to hear him. "We're the contingency."

"Then what was the point of calling us out here? I never get to shoot anything anymore. Annoying!"

"Patience, Chianti."

"I'm going to look. He hasn't even given us an all clear or anything. Something's not right. Watch my six."

An affirmative grunt.

The truth of the matter is Gin's never going to call. Ran thanks everything she knows of that Shinichi's coat and the dark coveralls must have blended into the night, or that they weren't paying attention, or something. She takes great care to make sure her footsteps don't make a sound, even though the voice sounds like it was coming from several meters away.

It's a good thing she didn't rest as the voice moves from its high perch and down into the forest floor, close to where she'd paused for a moment. Ran doesn't run, doesn't even dare to breathe, aware that crashing through the undergrowth would be enough noise to pull their attention to her and Shinichi.

Ran instead keeps at her steady pace, maneuvering through the woods by the light of the thin crescent. The conversation fades as Korn and Chianti go into operational silence, but the last lingering word has those two heading away from them, which is good.

Ran moves farther in the opposite direction.


	22. R E J E C T

Ran's been walking forever, it feels like. The night just seems to drag on and on. She looks up through the trees, wishing she knew how to tell time by the stars.

The ground is unforgiving to her bare feet, and they hurt something fierce.

Before she can stop herself, she lets out a great big yawn, shifting Shinichi so she can rub at her eyes. His head lolls. There's no doubt about it now. Shinichi is unconscious again. Or asleep. She debates curling up for a moment, finding a sheltered hollow or something. Once again, Ran feels the press of time. Night's the best time for them to escape their watchful eyes, and with the moon getting lower in the sky, she's running out of time.

They've got to get out now. They won't get a second chance.

So she walks, and walks, and walks, deep through the forested area until she comes to a tall chain-link fence. It has barbed wire on top of it; coiled concertina wire if she wants to get technical. As she walks the fence line, she doesn't see any breaks, no gaps under the fence big enough for them to crawl through. Today just isn't her day at all. She glances behind her. She walks it a bit further. Still nothing. A little farther, and she can hear the distant rushing of vehicles.

Bingo.

Ran stops and looks up. She frowns, takes a deep breath, swallows. No, it's not barbed wire. It's razor wire. Barbed steel tape. She looks down, rummages through her bag, does a quick inventory. Two jackets, a blouse, a camisole, a pair of jean shorts, her bra, Shinichi's jeans, the bag itself, her coveralls. For tools, she has the spare SIG Sauer from the second guard, the baton, and a pair of scissors.

A gun might be able to blow a lock, but it's useless for something like this. And her bra has underwire she can access with the scissors, but…

No wire-cutters. None of the clothing is heavy enough to protect against razor-wire. But that is assuming the person attempting to go over them is a certain weight. High tensile strength wire, the weight of the person. Hmm. She bounces Shinichi experimentally. Together, they're about her adult weight. With the double layer of the jacket and the thick work uniform and some of the clothes in the bag, it might bear their weight without cutting her.

There's no time to lose. Those two will find out about Gin soon. They might already be on their way, and she's caged like an animal waiting for the slaughter. And there's still the question of Vodka.

She's worried about him, but she feels his breath ghost against the back of her neck. He's still breathing in a regular pattern. She walks farther along the fence line. If she can't find a way under it, and has no tools to go through it, it will have to be over.

Ran shakes her shoulders. "Shinichi," she says. Nothing. She shakes them again, jostling him. Nothing. That makes things harder.

As if they weren't hard enough.

He's not doing well at all, his system having taken it harder than hers since the beginning. It's amazing he's even managed to last this long. She hasn't forgotten about what he said about being doped up on narcotics, either.

It has to be now. It has to be here. Shinichi needs a doctor, now more than ever.

The dim light of the moon through the trees illuminates the ground just enough she can see the bottom of the chain link. Relief rushes through her when she notices the ends of the fences are not welded together. It's their first lucky break throughout this entire ordeal. They're loose, and with a little time—even though it's time they don't have—she can unravel a hole wide enough for the both of them to fit through.

She tries to kneel and ends up collapsing to her knees. She wobbles, and Shinichi falls off her back to the ground, hitting it hard. He doesn't wake up. Ran shakes him with her hands, again and again and again and again.

Nothing doing. She places the back of her hand over his nose, but he's still breathing. That means there's still time, then. She hopes the fall hasn't hurt him. She arranges him so he's lying down as comfortable as possible, though she keeps the bag around her. Tears start to form in her eyes, but she ignores them. She can't help how she feels, but she doesn't have time to acknowledge them right now.

Ran sets her jaw, then turns back to the fence. She picks a section of the links at random, then with a deep breath, she touches it.

She doesn't fry. She exhales slowly. No electric fence. No welding. A thought threads its way through her mind, a memory of a conversation she'd heard long ago. 'It doesn't matter how expensive the lock is if one can simply unpin the hinges.' And they are using a pharmaceutical company as a front for the labs, probably saying the extra security is a part of their protections against corporate espionage, and there are limits to how far civilian institutions can go. Small favours.

Ran starts unwinding the links. It's slow work, and unforgiving. Her hands are numb by the time she reaches the tenth or so strand. Soon enough, she has a hole just wide enough for them to crawl through.

She shifts Shinichi over, checking his breathing again, relaxing just a bit when it's still steady, adjusts the bag, and levers him onto her back. It's tough. He falls off twice, but Ran finally manages to get him into a decent hold. She crawls underneath the brand-new hole in the fence, and through, and then she's out.

One more step on the path to freedom. She rejects any doubts she has that they won't make it. They'll make it. They have to. They've been through too much to fail now. She remembers the position of the moon and the direction in regards to the drive heading out to the road, and keeps walking towards her goal, keeping Shinichi safe the only thought in her mind.


	23. R E P A I R

As Ran walks, the sound of the busy motorway becomes louder. She's getting close. Tears well up again, but they are of relief, this time. They're nearly there. They've almost made it. That alone gives her a strong burst of new energy, and she feels like she could sprint right home from the sheer amount of joy alone.

She doesn't, of course, but the feeling is there. She takes it, guards it, tucks it inside of her for when she really needs it. There's something unreal about being so close to freedom after all this struggle. Like she's still asleep, having never woken up from that table. Like she shouldn't be feeling this way. Like even the feeling will cause something bad to happen. But Shinichi's dead weight makes it real enough, and so she moves on through the edges of the forested area.

She climbs a small hillock. She can see a six-laned road, busy at even this time of night, some kind of thoroughfare. Maybe a toll road? By the lay of the land, she thinks she's somewhere between Osaka and Tokyo, but she's not sure. Close to Nagoya, maybe. It's fairly mountainous, she can see the shadows of them in the distance against the stars, but she can't see Fuji from here. Can't see much of anything in the dark. She shakes her head. She can't get caught up in the details, not right now.

She'll make it to the road, then get someone to take her to a local hospital somehow, and they'll repair everything, and from there, they can contact the police. Ran will figure that out later. She tightens her grip on Shinichi. Everyone has mobile phones these days, she could do both at the same time.

More pressing is the access to the road. There's a bridge from the main road leading to the building they were trapped in, but surrounding it as far as the eye can see is a big ditch with steep sides. More like a gully with how deep it is. And though it's hard to tell with vegetation in the way, there's a few dark vehicles parked in front of the bridge. A small figure, lit up by headlights, barely visible but for the pale of his face, leans against one of them.

It's just a guess, she can't tell who it is from here, but she thinks by the height, it's Vodka. Vodka, Vermouth, Bourbon, Madeira, Chianti, Korn, Tequila…Gin. She wonders what the significance is. It's a rather kitsch thing for group of criminals, to be named after alcoholic drinks. It's like something out of a bad spy film. Ran can't help it. Her lip starts to twitch. They dress in all black, too, wearing sunglasses and big broad hats and dusters and trench coats. Conspicuously inconspicuous. She giggles, then wonders at her own capacity for levity. It shouldn't be this easy to laugh, not with Shinichi unconscious and another challenge in front of her, but she's optimistic. She has a strong feeling that the hardest part is behind them.

And there's got to be a way. Mr. Amuro said he was never here, which means there is an alternate escape route. She's missing something. Either way, she can't stay on top of this hill. It leaves her entirely too vulnerable . It's dark, with little light coming from the moon, but that doesn't mean anything.

The only problem is the closest way out is through the bridge and the SUVs. There's a small stream at the bottom of the gully. Ran frowns. If it had more water filling it, she might consider it an actual moat. It looks natural. She wonders how extensive the underground rooms are. The dampness in the cells didn't seem like they came from leaky pipes; it was probably built close to the water table, and with Japan's active tectonic plates, even a small earthquake could have brought water closer to the surface, causing the leak.

Ran wonders how deep it is, if it would be worth exposing Shinichi further. She licks her lips, sore and busted, cracked and dry, and moves, practically sliding down the hill, heading towards it. She won't cross it by standing still, and waiting does Shinichi no good. She approaches the stream, notes the silt and smooth river rocks that will make climbing down and back up again most difficult.

She follows the stream bed from above, looking for a decent place to cross it. A thought teases at her mind, the set-up sparking some kind of familiarity. A river with a bridge, a place to ford it, and—well. Maybe there's a place where the water runs deep with an undertow, a part of the river filled with serpents, poisonous and ready to bite. Maybe she did die on that table. The thought makes her a little uneasy about what waits her beyond. But she shakes her head. She can't let it affect her. Her exhaustion is making her mind wander, but the pain lets her know she's still alive. This small stream is no River Sanzu.

And there—just a little bit farther on, about a meter and a half or so. This side is still as steep as ever, but the other side is a more forgiving. It's still steep, but not nearly vertical. She takes a deep breath, makes sure the grip she has on Shinichi is steady. It will do no good to have him on her back like this on an incline, not with the weight of the bag, so she braces him against a tree, and shifts him into a fireman's carry, placing him parallel over her shoulders, his arm dangling over her left shoulder, his legs dangling over her right, most of the weight of his torso distributed evenly across her shoulders and upper back.

Shinichi still doesn't wake up.

She's a little more mobile this way, can catch herself easily if she falls. Making sure Shinichi is steady, she looks down, carefully placing each foot sideways, bracing her foot against the side of the slope.

It's anxious, careful work. At one point, she missteps and slides the rest of the way down, screaming, rocks cutting the bottom of her feet like glass, hands immediately going up to steady Shinichi as she runs to the bottom. He's okay, she's okay, hasn't broken anything However, she's skinned the side of her foot and her ankle where the trouser leg slid up, and it's raw and bleeding.

She's got no time to tend to it. In the distance she hears shouts, and as she crosses the tepid and mostly still water, algae growing on top, they're coming closer.

Ran crosses the water at a speed very near a run. They're a good distance away, the length of a sports field, closer to two, and they'll have to cross it on foot because of the trees.

Then she's climbing, grabbing tufts of vegetation and roots, pulling herself one-armed up the side of the ravine as she uses her other arm to hold on to Shinichi's arms and legs and keep him steady. For every ten centimeters she gains, she slides back five. Her scrabbling knocks some of the loose rock down, and she thinks of the dry river bed, of dead children building rocks to escape their fate, only to have them knocked down, the clothes-stealer laughing all the while.

That just makes her more determined to escape. She grits her teeth, pushes herself harder. If she has to escape on will alone, she _**will**_.

Ran pulls herself over the edge. The crack of a pistol has her scrambling to her feet. A bullet hits the dirt in front of her, she can see it ricochet a bit, but thankfully it avoids her. Another shot misses her, but only just. They're shooting wildly.

It appears all they have are handguns, and Ran's been around enough police officers to understand they have no accuracy at distance. Now that she's crossed the gap, they'll have to go around or waste time following her. Though considering she'd heard the woman's voice in a tree, it's no question to deduce they have snipers.

Still doesn't mean they won't be in trouble if one hits her, and with Shinichi on her back, the perfect target, she doesn't even want to think about what might happen.

She read a story once about two star-crossed lovers from opposing armies, fleeing from battle so they could be together. One night, a horse waiting for their escape. He was the better horseman, but he insisted that she ride in front. They were pursued by archers. The horseman told his lover to fly, and so she spurred the horse on. When the horse finally gave, over the kingdom's border where neither army could follow, she turned to her lover, still warm, only for him to fall from the horse, dozens of arrows in his back, dead. He'd saved her life, but at the cost of his own. That story haunts her now with Shinichi between her and the gunmen.

The road is just a few hundred meters ahead. Ran bares her teeth. She can make it. She _will_ make it. That won't be Shinichi. Not now.

Not ever.


	24. R E P O S E

Ran runs.

Freedom is right there, so close she can almost taste it. That thought is the only thing that keeps her moving forward. Bullets rain down on her, but she manages to avoid every single one. That will change as they get closer to her, close the range, and become more accurate.

She doesn't look back. That will just slow her down. She's already weighed down as small as she is with Shinichi being her size, and even though the fireman's carry offers her speed and better mobility, it's only marginally more helpful than having him piggyback had been.

At least his target area is smaller this way.

The last stretch before the road is wide and open, no cover to be seen. There are still a few of them thundering through the underbrush and across the gully, gaining on her quickly.

She chances a quick look; they're already too close for comfort, guns out. She grits her teeth. Japan has a gun ban with harsh penalties; where are all these guns coming from?

They're catching up quickly—they're adults with longer strides, she's weighed down with Shinichi and wounded with a deep-bone ache she's afraid will follow her the rest of her life, but not once does she ever consider dropping him.

And then—

A gunshot, almost in slow motion. She feels Shinichi jerk against her neck, and then warm blood pour down her left shoulder.

NO!

With a last ditch burst of speed, she sprints the last five meters to the road, adrenaline making climbing up and over the guardrail easy.

But it's already too late. She's in an empty lane that leads to the main road, and there are at least six cars heading straight towards her, speeding from the exit. One has a woman hanging out the side of it, readying a rifle.

Ran does the only thing she can do with the massive vehicle revving straight for her: she runs directly into high speed traffic.

The traffic lights blind her. Horns honk, vehicles swerve out of the way. They're still shooting at her, even though the traffic between them is protecting her somewhat.

Each time a car passes, she feels the wind. It's only a miracle she hasn't been hit yet. She can chance it no longer; she runs back to the shoulder. It's more like a shuffling stumble, but she's trying. She's going as fast as she can.

But Vodka is gaining, the woman in black shooting at her with absurd accuracy.

Ran starts crying again, pushing herself harder, beyond endurance, so far past her limit she wonders how she's even still moving.

A honking horn nearly sends her over the guardrail and plummeting off the side to the rocky ground below.

A silver old-fashioned sports car stops with a slide right next to her. It's a sedan-type, and the passenger-side door opens showing a leather interior.

There's a teenager sitting in the back seat, dressed in black jeans, a black long-sleeved shirt, and a black ball cap.

"Shin-Shinichi?" Ran stammers, tightening her grip on Shinichi. It's not him, she knows it's not him, there have been so many others that resembled him but weren't—he's still such a look alike, it stuns her for a moment.

"Get in!" he shouts at her, reaching for Shinichi. Oh, he even sounds like him.

Indecision wars with her for a moment, but she looks at the blood covering her chest, dripping down from Shinichi's shoulder, and she hands Shinichi off, climbing in herself. If she doesn't, they're dead anyway. At least if they kill her here, it won't help the criminal scientists. It's a cold comfort.

"Gramps!" He yells at the driver, who is indeed an old man.

"I'm on it, sir!" The old man says, and puts the pedal to the metal, weaving in and out of traffic like he's done it all his life. For all she knows, he has.

The teenager has already stripped Ran's jacket off Shinichi, pulling his thin shirt up before Ran realises what's going on.

"Stop!" Ran shouts. She wants to throw herself at him, bite him, claw at him, tear him apart for daring to touch him.

"Shh," he murmurs, voice gentle, putting his hands up. "I'm not going to hurt him. He needs help, Little Miss. Trust me?"

She doesn't want to, but can she really afford not to? Shinichi is bleeding again, is dying for all she knows, and she can barely even think coherently anymore. Abruptly, all the fight goes out of her, and she sags against the leather seats, not even caring she's getting blood and all manner of filth over the expensive material. "I don't have any choice, do I?"

"There's always a choice," he says, rummaging under the seat for a first aid kit. "It may not be a pleasant one, but it's there all the same." He bandages Shinichi with a deft hand, checking him for other injuries as the car swerves haphazardly, discarded shirt over Shinichi for modesty, perfectly balanced and steady even as the car nearly goes up on two wheels. What?

Ran doesn't trust him, but she doesn't try to stop him. He keeps looking at her though, especially her face, as he probes where Shinichi's stitches have ripped. "How long has he been unconscious?"

Ran rubs at her eyes. "Two hours, I think, but he was awake and alert before that. He nodded off several times, though."

"Any idea what they gave him?"

Ran shakes her head. "He mentioned something about a narcotic, being unable to think clearly. Umm," she thinks back to what he had said. "Euphoria, brightness, rapid heartbeat…" she trails off.

"A stimulant. And yet he shows all the signs of an overdose on a depressant," the not-Shinichi murmurs.

A bullet crashes through the glass as all three of them duck. Thankfully, it misses everyone, but they keep their heads low as the silver car careens around another vehicle.

"A chemical cocktail," he continues if he hasn't been interrupted. Whoa. Talk about grace under fire. The word "cocktail" makes Ran flinch. "Probably speedball. Heroin and cocaine have an especially harmful drug synergy."

"Why, though?" Ran wonders. "I thought they needed him alive for the experiments—" She realises what she's just said, and her hand comes up to clamp her mouth.

The teen's eyes narrow. "Experiments?"

Ran turns away to look out the window, rubbing the strain out of her calves.

"Ah. Well, this is just a guess, but cocaine can mask the symptoms of a heroin overdose. If an overdose is the case, we don't have any time to lose, not if it's already been two or more hours." He turns to the driver. "Gramps. Hospital?"

"We will have to lose the unwanted tagalongs first," Gramps says as another bullet hits the rear windscreen and carves a furrow into the back seat, embedding itself in the passenger seat in the front.

"I'm sorry, but who are you?" Ran asks, heart racing from the gunshot. He didn't flinch at this one either. Who is he? _What_ is he that he's so calm?

"Shouldn't I be asking you that? The good Professor told us we were looking for two teenagers and maybe a child," the teenager says. "Not two children."

"Who's the good Professor?" Ran says. There's hope flaring in her, bright hope, but she has to be sure.

"An old acquaintance of mine," says the driver. "Agasa Hiroshi. I think you have half of Tokyo looking for you two." He cuts someone off to another honk, then one of the cars veers into another lane, hitting one of the black vehicles pursuing them. They stop, both of them totaled. It feels cruel to think it, but it's one less Ran has to worry about. There are still five of them in pursuit.

"Not just Tokyo," the teen says. "You two have friends everywhere. He asked Gramps to help look for you; the police triangulated the pings from a nearby base station, and we just happened to be close. I don't know how you managed to get a mobile, but it was very lucky you did."

Ran sags even further into the seat, bones turning to liquid as the tension finally leaves her. She's safe. Well, she thinks wryly as another bullet hits the side of the car with the sound of tearing metal, safer than she was, anyway.

"My name Jii," the driver offers.

Ran hesitates for a moment. "Ran," Ran says, not giving her last name but unable to come up with a better alternative. "And um, this is Conan." It's probably pointless anyway, especially if Doctor Agasa asked them to look for them, but she makes a token effort.

"Hmm. That's not his real name, is it?" The teenager says, dawning realisation on his face, and then a satisfied smirk as if he's just figured out something difficult. He doesn't offer his name, which is rude, but Ran supposes he has his reasons.

"No," Ran says. Shinichi was keeping himself hidden because it would put them all in danger. If they know about the shrinking, then there's no point in keeping it a secret now. Especially since these two can easily figure it out from her.

"Well, that explains a few things, rather," he says. Ran has no idea what he's talking about, but thankfully, he leaves it alone. "Here, your feet are bleeding all over the place. Let me take a look." He shifts Shinichi over, checking his breath and his pulse with a frown on his face, before moving to the vacated seat and pulling Ran's feet into his lap.

She can't help but wince at his touch. They're absolutely shredded. He tsks at her. "I don't know how you managed to get this far on these," he says.

"Pure, stubborn tenacity," Ran says with another wince as he touches them.

With a frown, he picks out the largest pieces of debris. "I can believe it," he says. "They're not bleeding that freely, so I think I'd better leave these to the professionals. There's no telling what you've picked up, and the last thing I want to do is to give bacteria a place to breed. Oh, and before I forget," he snaps his fingers, and a smartphone appears in his hand.

Ran blinks. He fires off a quick text before handing the phone out to her. "I've just let your law enforcement friends know. You have anyone else you might want to call?"

"Dad," Ran whispers, and then she's fumbling for the phone, nearly dropping it in her haste to ring her father. She loves her mother, but her mother has always been stronger than her father, so her mind jumps to him first.

She tries the Detective Agency first. It rings and rings and rings, and no one's there. Her heart sinks. Just as she's about to hang up, there's a man's voice, gruff from lack of sleep and sounding worn, so very worn. "Hello?" And it's her father.

"Dad?" she says warily, knowing her voice is young, childish, small, different.

"Ran?!"


	25. R E C I T E

For a long moment, there is nothing but silence. And then—

"Ran? Are you all right? Are you safe? Where are you?" her father asks in a frenzy, tripping over his words in his haste to get them out.

"I'm safe," she says, just as another bullet cracks overhead, belying her words. There's the sound of shattering glass, and the rear windscreen is gone, tiny glass pieces scattered all across the rear seat as she ducks over Shinichi, and the teen's body covers them both. Air whistles inside the car, making it hard to hear. Ran sinks down lower. Not-Shinichi tosses something out the broken window, and there's a bright flash of light, blinding in its intensity, and then the sound of squealing tires and the crunch of metal. Ran winces.

"Was that gunfire? You don't sound safe," her father near-shouts. "I'm coming to get you! Where are you?" he demands again, voice still frantic, questions coming non-stop. He doesn't seem to notice the change in her voice, or if he has, he hasn't said anything.

Ran puts a hand over the phone. "Where are we?" she asks not-Shinichi, and it's louder than she intends, so he can hear her over the wind.

"Shizuoka," he says.

"Shizuoka," she parrots. Her guess was close. It's hard to see Fuji in the dark. "We're in Shizuoka Prefecture, not sure where, heading for the closest hospital."

"What do you mean, 'we?'" her father asks.

Ran hesitates. "Um," she says after a long moment. "The people that rescued me, and—" she stops, unsure of what to call Shinichi, if she should even acknowledge they are together. They disappeared together, so…

"I think you did a fair amount of rescuing on your own, little Miss Ran, " Not-Shinichi says with a laugh.

"Is that upstart detective brat with you?" he grumbles, but there's a thread of concern laced through it. They may not get along, but Ran knows her father has a grudging respect for Shinichi.

That might change when he figures out Shinichi's been living with them. He liked Conan well enough, eventually, but will he understand? Ran reaches out, loops her fingers through Shinichi's own. "Yes," she says. "He is."

"Ran, why—" Her father's voice increases in volume. Ran wonders if he thought they eloped or something.

She cuts him off. "He's not doing very well," she says, and her voice is firm with a hint of warning. "He's been shot," Ran says. "And they doped him up on something." She's made her decision. Nothing will convince her to leave his side.

Her father seems to pick up on that, and thankfully backs off. "What happened? Ran, where have you been?" her father asks, and there's something in his voice that's broken, shattered in a million pieces. Ran can't remember a time she's ever heard him this distressed. "Why can I hear gunshots?"

Ran takes a deep, rattling breath. "We were kidnapped. They want us back."

"There was no ransom," her father says. "I haven't heard anything. You and him just vanished."

"There wouldn't have been. I don't know how much you know, but Shinichi was working on a big case—"

"And he dragged you right into it!" her father says.

How can she recite these facts in a way that her father will understand? "He did what he could to protect me," Ran says. "He's always done that." Gin's lifeless body appears before her eyes, falling, falling, falling. She closes them, forcing the image to go away. She can't afford to be distracted. "And I've been involved since the beginning." Ran had seen the two men at Tropical Land just as Shinichi had, and other times where the people named after liquors had been present. Death is apart of her life now, and she has to accept it. "Everyone back there needs to be careful, they're all danger. Look, I'll explain—Kyaaa!" Ran shrieks as Mr. Jii makes an abrupt turn on a side road, oversteering, drifting into it, then gunning the accelerator, shifting the car into high gear. Ran hears the train horn before she sees it, sees the flashing lights of the crossing barriers lowering.

Instead of slowing down, Mr. Jii speeds up. Ran holds tight to the door and Shinichi's hand, pressing herself against the back of the seat. Even not-Shinichi looks a little worried, slumped down and bracing himself against the other door and the seat in front of him.

As the train moves closer to the intersection, Mr. Jii doesn't even slow down. It'll be close, the train isn't that far away, the barriers are already lowered—

The train's lights are blinding, the driver sees their car, they _must_ , since the train lets out a deep loud sound of its horn—

And then—

The sound of something crashing, wood from the barrier hitting the front of the car and bouncing up. Wind from the train drags them a little as it misses the little silver sports-sedan by inches.

But it misses. Ran lets out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding.

Then she notices she's still on the phone with her father. "—an! Ran! Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Dad," Ran laughs, an explosion of relief more than anything else. "We were in a spot of trouble, but we're making it all right now."

And that's it.

They're free.

By the time the train finishes crossing the intersection, they're already long gone, the people pursuing them stopped in their tracks by the long train. Not-Shinichi tells her the name of the hospital they're headed to, one several towns away just to throw them off their trail, and Ran passes that information to her dad.

"I'll let everyone know to be careful and meet you there," her father says. "Ran, I know I haven't—" and then he stops, unable to finish.

As he struggles to find his words, Ran gathers her courage. She has to do it now, or she won't do it, and it will be a nasty surprise if he finds out that way. "Um, Dad. Before you get here, there's ah, something you should know."

"That detective brat hasn't touched you, has he?" her dad asks, but Ran thinks it's an attempt to keep things normal more than anything.

It still doesn't stop Ran from blushing and going, "Of course not! Geez, Dad! But um," she starts, playing with the tangled dirty strands of her hair. "You may be a little surprised when you see me," she says, looking at her small dirty feet ruefully. She's still a little surprised, and she doesn't know how he'll handle the shock of her shrinking, much less the idea that Shinichi is Conan.

"What do you mean?" he asks.

"You'll see when you get here. Just don't freak out, all right?" she says. "And Mom?"

"She's out looking. I'll call her. We'll both meet you there with the police. Look, Ran, be safe."

"You too, Dad. I'm okay," Ran says. And it's not quite true, but it's true enough. There's no need of worrying him any further, not right now.. "I'll see you soon. Stay safe," she says, "Keep on the move," because they might go after them since they can't get at Shinichi or her at the moment.

Ran hangs up, hands the phone back to not-Shinichi. She closes her eyes, lets herself be lulled by the swaying of the beaten-up car.

She must fall asleep between where they are and where they're going because the next thing she knows, not-Shinichi is shaking her shoulder.

"We're here," the teenager says gently. "I phoned ahead. They want to take you both in now."

He reaches out his arms in the universal gesture, and feeling slightly self-conscious, she lets him pick her up, carrying her to doors of the hospital while Mr. Jii carries Shinichi, who is still unconscious.

Before they even make it through the doors, though, Ran passes out.


	26. R E B U K E

Ran wakes up, cold and in a hospital bed. The room is dark. There's something attached to her arm and machines, so many machines.

Her heart lurches. She thought she'd escaped! Maybe it had just all been a dream.

She turns, and something in her heart eases as she spots Shinichi in a bed next to hers.

Ran looks. She's not strapped down; Someone has changed her clothes, and now she's in a hospital yukata. Looking around the room, it looks like a critical care ward. Ran's been bandaged, her stitches redone. Her feet are wrapped up uncomfortably, and they itch. She pulls her IV out with a wince, pressing her hand against the vein to stop the bleeding, then climbs over the rail and falls off the bed, hitting the floor hard, her clean, dry hair spilling around her, covering her like a curtain. She's a little relieved. She thought they would cut it all off, it was so tangled and filthy. It may be a pain sometimes, but she likes her long hair.

She struggles to her feet slowly, pulling off the rest of the wires, machines beeping. Ran crosses the short distance between the beds, limping on burning feet. She pulls herself up in Shinichi's bed by will alone. He's still breathing, in a hospital yukata too. His colour is better from what she can tell in the dark room. His breathing is easier, and he's been bandaged as well.

They made it. It's been a day at least, maybe more. She must have slept through it all. She's sore, but she feels better than she has in a long time. His hair is messy, and he's splayed out, so small in the big bed.

He's alive. He's alive and he's breathing and he's okay. He's safe. But he still could be a hallucination. She has to touch him.

She doesn't see her father or mother or anyone but them in the dark room. She crawls to Shinichi's side, pulls him into her arms, being careful with the wires and tubes and things, being careful with him because of his injuries. His foot and leg are in a cast. She curls around him, snuggling into his chest and closing her eyes. He's so warm, and his steady rhythmic breathing lulls her back to sleep.

He's safe.

* * *

When she wakes up again, it's still dark. Only she's wrapped around Shinichi's waist, her head pillowed in his lap. He's sitting up, shaking, and Ran can feel tension running though his frame. He's got one hand tangled in her hair, fingers warm against her head. Her IV is back, and the machines have been moved to monitor both of them in the same bed.

She sits up, rubbing at her eyes, blinking them blearily. Shinichi's hand falls from her hair to her waist as he tucks her against his side.

"Inspector Yokomizo?" Ran asks as she wakes up a little more, catching sight of his distinctive head of hair.

Shinichi shakes his head. "Vermouth. She's a master of disguise. Aren't you?"

Inspector Yokomizo lets out a sigh, oddly feminine, pulls at something, and his shoulders deflate. He tears off his face, pulls off his wig, and suddenly he's a long-haired blonde, curvy, one hand on her hip, still in a man's suit. "I am." Blue eyes still ice cold, lips still blood-red. But there's a softness there in the shape of her eyes, one that wasn't there before.

"Why are you here?" Shinichi asks.

"I felt things had to be settled. Gin's dead."

Shinichi grabs Ran's hand. "Your point?" he says, but his voice wavers. Ran squeezes his hand, he squeezes back.

"Oh, I don't have a point. Not really. I just thought it was interesting, that's all." Vermouth says, walking closer to the bed, sitting on the edge of it. "How you decide who lives and who dies."

Ran doesn't know how to feel. On one hand, this woman has contributed to a great deal of her trauma. On the other hand, she's the reason why they escaped. Now she's playing some kind of mind game with Shinichi when he already feels guilty enough.

"You make it sound like it was some kind of arbitrary decision," Shinichi says. "I didn't have a choice."

"Didn't you?" Vermouth says, and she sounds distracted, her gaze far off and shuttered. Then her eyes zero in on Ran. "Or maybe the guardian angel needed a guardian angel of her own." She leans over, ignoring Shinichi's bristling, and presses a crimson kiss to Ran's forehead. "This is the last time I can afford to be so lenient." She shakes her finger at Shinichi, giving him a stern look. "You had better take better care of her, cool guy." It's a gentle rebuke, but a rebuke all the same.

Ran blinks. It's something one might expect to hear from a mother, or an aunt, or a cool older sister, not from a member of a dangerous and deadly organisation.

"After all, the smile of an angel is a dear and precious thing," she says, standing. "And when one smiles at you, you should treasure it in your heart forever."

That sounded like…? Ran is stunned. Stunned. She thought she'd recognised certain movements, the way she held herself, but before she can bring herself to ask, Vermouth is already gone. She puts it out of her mind. She can't. It's too much. She can't think about it right now.

Shinichi's shaking his head, lines of stress on his face. It's such an old look for such a young face. Ran's still leaned against his side, but it doesn't feel awkward or anything. Just comfortable. Shinichi wraps his other arm around her, pulling her closer.

"It wasn't so long ago it was the other way around, huh?" Ran says, cuddling into his side, deciding to leave the heavy topics for later. And yes, they will have to be talked about. But not right now.

"Yeah. Now I can hold you," Shinichi says, his voice quiet. "Ran, you're okay," he says in wonder, putting both hands on the side of her face, leaning his forehead against hers in a mimicry of what she did earlier. It's relief, and exhaustion, and pure joy at escaping alive.

"We're okay," she agrees. "I was worried! You weren't waking up. I thought you were dead."

"I would be," he says, "If it hadn't been for you, I would be." He looks up at the door. "We're going to have to face the music. They've been by, but I faked sleep. They're getting anxious. I wasn't sure how to explain you."

"How did you know that wasn't the Inspector?" Ran asks.

"He doesn't tie his tie in that kind of knot," Shinichi says.

"I've already told my father," Ran says. "Over the phone. He doesn't know the specifics, but there's no sense hiding it anymore since those people know."

"Yeah," Shinichi says, letting out a breath. "I thought you might have. I heard his voice outside, but no one has let them in yet."

"Them?"

"Your mother is here, too. And I think some Tokyo officers since it happened in Tokyo. The doctors have been pretty good about it. They ah, also tried to move you back into your bed earlier, and you didn't, uh, react well to it," he says with a blush. "They said it was easier to keep us together, even if it wasn't hospital policy."

Ran frowns. "Good. You think after everything I've been through I'm just going to let you go?"

Shinichi's colour deepens.

Outside, the sun is beginning to rise. The warm amber light filters in through the window. It's the dawn of a new day. The challenges are far from over; in fact, some of them are just beginning, but as she looks at Shinichi's flushed face, their hands entwined still, Ran thinks she's ready to handle them.

A knock on the door startles them both, but it's only the gesture of politeness, as before they can react, it swings open wide.


	27. R E S U L T

It's Inspector Yokomizo. He's been run ragged, bags under his eyes, his hair an absolute mess, his suit rumpled like it's been slept in. Ran doesn't know if it's the real one. Vermouth is a master of disguise apparently, and that means she could be _anyone_. She shakes her head. No, she can't be that way. She _won't_ be that way. She refuses. She's not the kind of person that can treat everyone as a potential enemy, even after everything that's happened to her.

Ran catches a glimpse of her father out in the hallway before the Inspector closes the door. Two plainclothes officers are restraining him from entering as he fights their hold, yelling for Ran; her mother's acerbic tones also cut through the hall to the room, quieter but just as angry. Another two in policeman blues guard the door

"Edogawa Conan?" Yokomizo says, voice hesitant, like he can't quite believe it. He sounds confused.

Ran knows why. The bruises on Shinichi's face are still dark purple, his eye swollen nearly shut. The dark stitches on his brow stand out against the red, angry skin, and he's dotted with bandages, marks, incisions the hospital yukata doesn't entirely hide. He doesn't look like Conan. Not with the bruises, without the glasses. That's the point of wearing them.

Ran wonders how she compares. It can't be pretty, either. Then she remembers the blush across Shinichi's face as he gazed at her, red against the stark purple of his skin, the tenderness in his eyes. It doesn't matter. She squeezes his hand again, and his arm tightens around her.

"That's a name for me," Shinichi says. His voice is sharp. It's not a denial or an affirmation of his identity, exactly. Ran wonders what he's doing, but she thinks she knows. It's more of a stretch, seeing as how Conan has an established identity. She doesn't. Ran would prefer to have her parents in here already. The anticipation is nerve-racking. Kudou Shinichi and Mouri Ran went missing. Edogawa Conan and an unnamed little girl were found. She wonders just what not-Shinichi texted the police.

There's a commotion at the door; her father forces his way in having escaped the grip of the two men holding him back. "I want to see my daughter!" he yells. Her mother follows in a high dander, and they both catch sight of her at the same time. Her father's eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot from lack of sleep and drinking, her mother has deep purple lines under hers even makeup can't hide.

Her mother figures it out first, her eyes flickering between Ran and Shinichi; she purses her lips. Her father is still blinking, processing exactly what's in front of him, just staring.

Ran's mother says, "I should have known. You haven't changed at all. Still dragging Ran into your messes." It's a non-reaction, but Ran knows her mother, the muscle working in her jaw, the lay of her face when she's just been thrown an unexpected variable. Her mother is reeling, but her lawyer's face is in place. "Childhood friends." She shakes her head. "Detectives, even worse. I told you no good would come of this, Ran." It's scolding, fearful. Misplaced anger, like it has always been. Projecting her own situation onto Ran. Shinichi is not her father. He never has been, and he never will be. He has his own set of obstacles—Shinichi is not flawless, who could be?—but theirs is a different set of trials. There's no comparison.

It still affects him. Shinichi looks down, knuckles whitening. "Sorry," he says, voice plaintive, ducking his head in a bow as deep as he can manage sitting and unable move his leg. Ran can't remember a time Before when she's heard him say sorry so frequently and be so sincere as she has during this ordeal. She can tell it throws her mother, too. Her mother's eyes widen, and she looks away in guilt.

"I made my choice," Ran says, "for better or worse." And maybe it's little early to think about _that_ , but Ran thinks it can't get much more apparent after everything they've been through. Ran loves her parents. She always will. She wants to keep their words in her heart, obey them and respect the head of the family as a good daughter should. But even though her mother speaks to protect her, even though there is some truth to her words, she cannot in good conscience obey them. There will always be danger, whether Shinichi is a detective or not, and she refuses to let that sway her.

Shinichi stares at her, his mouth open, a little stunned. He flushes, pathetically grateful for her words, his eyes suspiciously shiny.

Her father's face is turning red. He's building up a temper, she can see it as he prepares to speak, so she cuts him off. She shrugs out of Shinichi's hold, placing herself in front of him and holding out her arms to each side. "Dad," Ran says quietly. "You promised not to freak out." She holds his eyes, defiant.

He didn't promise, not really, but it makes him lose steam, and he visibly wilts, the abrupt disappearance of the rush of anger leaving him tired. In the end, he only says one word, gruff and packed with a novel of emotion. "How?"

Ran's lower lip quivers, her eyes filling with tears, and she reaches out, shaking her head. Her parents rush forward almost as one and take her into their arms. If this were any less serious, she might take delight in the fact they're here together without arguing, that they are practically embracing as they hold her for a long moment between them. She takes comfort, strength from them for a long moment before she turns, wiggling in their grip so she can see Shinichi.

He looks so alone on that bed, and miserable. "I'll tell you, Uncl—" he grimaces, correcting himself. "Mr. Mouri."

"You can still call me 'Uncle," her father says, scratching at his cheek with a finger. "If you want. Brat," he grumbles. "It's not like I'm going to be able to get rid of you anytime soon," he says with a scowl on his face and a glance towards Ran.

Shinichi's lip quirks, a tentative smile, before his expression grows serious. "If anyone deserves to know, it's you." His eyes flicker to the Inspector, who is standing stock still, bewildered. "Are you sure you want to hear this?"

"I don't understand what's going on," the Inspector admits. "That's Ms. Ran?" he sounds so confused. He turns to him. "If that really is her, then who are you?"

"It's dangerous for you to be wrapped up in this," Shinichi warns. "You should think about it. There's still a chance it won't affect you."

"You were found in my prefecture," Inspector Yokomizo says. "You're my responsibility."

"Not necessarily. This is bigger than you, or me, or even the police force," Shinichi says. "It's dangerous."

The Inspector frowns, but he says, "I can't in good conscience ignore this. Not a kidnapping. Not if it happened here."

"Very well. My name is Kudō Shinichi," Shinichi says.

Ran can tell Yokomizo recognises the name instantly. "But you're—" he gestures up and down, indicating Shinichi's entire body.

"I am," Shinichi agrees. "Doesn't make it any less true."

"Then that really is Ms. Ran," the Inspector says, "How?" at the same time as her father says in a voice raising volume with every sentence, "Hmph. You lived under my roof, slept with my daughter, lied to my face—"

"They would have killed you," Shinichi says quietly . "They almost did, several times, starting with the bomb on the bullet train."

Her father's mouth opens and closes a few times. In just a few words, Shinichi's shut him down hard.

Ran pulls away from her parents and goes back to Shinichi's side, shoulders touching, giving him support just by her presence. She can guess at most of it, but it will also be nice to hear the truth.

"Who is 'they?'" Her mother asks.

"I think you'd better start from the beginning," the Inspector says.

And so Shinichi does. He begins with the night at Tropical Land, going into great detail about how he shrank the first time, going to the bullet train, the gaming convention, the corrupted disk, to the Bell Tree Express and everything in between, everything after. He talks about their abduction from the restaurant, his side of the experiments to the apotoxin. He talks until the sun is bright and his voice is hoarse, his explanation made all the longer by the constant questions the four of them ask.

Ran fills in her side, what she knows from their "excursion."

He leaves a few things out. Sherry, for one. Probably more that she doesn't know about, but he does tell them about killing Gin. Ran follows his lead, keeping mum on the things he doesn't touch. She trusts his reasons.

Her mother reaches out, traces the healing scab across her neck. "My brave girl," she murmurs. Ran's not brave, not really. She cries too much and she doesn't like ghosts or horror movies or dark places and she has no idea how they escaped that building alive. She just did what she had to do. Anyone would.

Her father has gone from sitting to pacing, still listening. His face is grave, his movements clipped, contained anger. "I knew," he says. "That time at the television station wasn't a fluke. I knew it," he repeats. He turns, looking at Shinichi. "The cases. It was you all along, wasn't it?" His expression has shifted. Less like anger, and more like…understanding?

Shinichi nods. "It was." Then he ducks his head like he's expecting a hard blow. Ran's not sure exactly what they're talking about, but she thinks about it a little bit and then—

Oh.

 _Oh._

How the upswing in her father's work came around the same time Conan did. How her father's deductive skills improved exponentially overnight. Her father is good at his work, but he's hasty and careless sometimes, how he almost seemed to have two personalities. Shinichi was responsible somehow. Get him famous, then it becomes a problem if he disappears. Shinichi was well-known before his disappearance, but still a teenager and considered fickle because of his age. Her father has both the age and the connections.

He storms over to Shinichi. Shinichi flinches away from him, but his hands only fall to his shoulders, and he says, "Thank you for taking care of my daughter."

Shinichi shakes his head. "She took care of me," he says, where once he might have preened at the praise. This whole thing has changed him, changed them both, really. Changed them all.

Ran bumps his shoulder. "We saved each other," she says as her father steps away and resumes his pacing, pulling at his moustache.

"Those people in black…will they still come?" her mother asks of him.

"They will," Shinichi says. "Every one who knows becomes a threat. There's no hiding for me, not anymore. They'll come for me, and Ran, and you both," he cuts his eyes to the Inspector. "They'll come for you, too. Anyone we've ever had any extended contact with. Anyone they think we might have told."

"But the police," Inspector Yokomizo tries to protest.

"It wouldn't be the first time they've been able to access police files, circumvent police security," Shinichi says, and if he hadn't caught their attention before, he does now. All three of the adults focus their full attention on him. "They're powerful."

"They can be anyone," Ran says. "Even people we know," she says, thinking of Mr. Amuro, looking at the Inspector whom Vermouth had disguised herself as. "I don't fancy ending up with them again."

"You won't," her father says, and he's still pulling at his moustache. "Not if I have anything to say about it."

"Me either," Shinichi says. "I couldn't protect you once. It won't happen again," he says, and there's fire, dark anger in his voice. Her father and Shinichi look at each other and nod. It's an accord struck with adamantine binding.

Her father may like to take the easiest route, but he's always been serious when it comes to protecting his friends and his family. He'd do anything for them, stretch himself beyond his limits. And she knows he'd never say it, and neither would her mother, but Shinichi is considered family. How could he not be after all the time they've spent together?

And for once, everything is out in the open, including what they are to one another. Relief settles into her bones. This, _everything_ , could have gone a lot worse. Now there are no more lies between them.

"Let's all work together!" Ran says, clapping her hands, beaming.

Her mother says, "I'll handle the legal side of things. Inspector?"

Yokomizo inhales before letting out a deep breath slowly. "I think I'm way out of my depth here, but I'll do what I can to help," he says, his face growing determined. "Corruption or no corruption. I'll see who I can dig up to help. They can't get us all."

Shinichi opens his mouth to say something else, but the door swings open again.

"Hey, Kudō!" a voice calls out.


	28. R E M A I N

Hattori Heiji steps through the door, sees the five of them looking at straight at him, blanches, then backtracks. "I mean, Kudō-n't you tell me the room was filled with people before I walked in, hahaha?" he laughs nervously. "Isn't there a limit to the number of visitors per hospital room?"

Ran giggles. In retrospect, it's really, really obvious he knows about Shinichi's "little" problem.

"Hattori," Shinichi says. "Give it up. They know." He sounds exhausted, the slightest bit exasperated, but fond. "It's not like I can hide it anymore."

"Of course you told the Osaka brat," her father grumbles.

"I didn't tell him," Shinichi says, annoyed. "He deduced it on his own." Ran wonders when. It had to be relatively early in their acquaintance, the way he was always going on about "Kudō" this and "Kudō" that. It explained the mystery of how he and Shinichi had met, certainly, if it had been the locked room library case. Only he must have seen through Shinichi. It's something she's always wondered about.

Hattori blinks, absorbing the information and recalibrating his mindset. He opens his mouth to say something, then he catches sight of Ran, half-tucked behind Shinichi. "Missy!" Hattori says. His mouth gapes open for a moment before he gets his bearings back. "You're little!" He shakes his head, does a double-take. "What happened to your _face_?" he says, walking over to the hospital bed, giving Ran a thorough once-over.

Well, trust Hattori to always be tactful. "Hello to you too," Ran says.

"What happened? I'd heard you both disappeared while you were on a date with Kudō, but…" he trails off. Ran blushes at the word date. It wasn't then, not really. "You both look like you been at the devil," Hattori says, leaning over the edge of the bed to look Shinichi close in the face, gripping Shinichi's chin to keep him from moving away, turning it from one side to the other. "And the devil returned the feelin'."

"Something along those lines," Shinichi says. "They've found me out, Hattori. No one's safe anymore. They kidnapped us in broad daylight from a public place. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't already put word out on the rest of us."

"I ain't afraid of 'em," Hattori says, his jaw set and his face grim. "Let 'em come. We've outdone 'em before."

"This isn't the first time?" Inspector Yokomizo asks.

Shinichi shakes his head. "We've outmanoeuvred them on several occasions."

"They got you with what they hit Kudō with?" Hattori asks, turning to Ran.

"Yes. I was the test case for the new solution," Ran says. "From what I've seen, it was slower, though no less painful." Ran shivers in remembrance. She'll never forget the way Shinichi fell apart in her arms. The cracking of his bones, the way he literally slipped through her fingers will haunt her dreams forever. The thought that it happened to her still makes her sick if she thinks too much about it.

"Is that why they needed you both?" Hattori asks.

"One of the reasons," Shinichi says. "Their new scientist was working from the same base, but needed the version of apotoxin used on me in order to further her own work. She succeeded. I wouldn't consider it lucky, but…" Shinichi glances over at her. "Thanks to Ran, we got the data she used. With any luck, I'll be back to myself in no time."

"Ah. Does that mean the other little missy is gonna make you a cure now that she's got what she needs?"

Shinichi winces. Ran's not far behind. That can only be one person. Ran didn't know Hattori knew, but she's not surprised. He and Shinichi are close, for all that they compete.

"Other little miss?" her father says. "What other little miss?"

"There's someone else?" Her mother says, giving them both a _look._ She and Shinichi almost as one hang their heads, caught out in a lie of omission. For the first time since this all began, Ran feels the age she looks.

"You know what?" Hattori says, realizing he's just made a mistake. He throws up a hand, darts to the door. "I'm thinkin' I should go. Tell me everythin' later, all right, Kudō?"

Before he can leave, her father grabs him by the ear, imitating his Kansai accent. "An' I'm thinkin' you should stay an' explain yourself."

He pulls him over to the bed much to Hattori's loud protests. "Hey, I don't sound like that!"

"Who are you talking about?" he demands, forcing him to sit down.

"Well, one of Conan's friends just so happens to have shrunk too?" Hattori scratches the back of his head. He says it like a question, but it's anything but.

Her mother crosses her arms. "And?" Oh, her mother knows a weak link when she sees one, and she presses against it. Hard. She's tapping her foot, giving him a disappointed look. Hattori doesn't take long to snap.

"And she's the one that invented it in the first place?"

"You're saying she worked with the people that kidnapped my daughter?" her mother demands.

Ran shakes her head. "It's not like that. She's alone. And afraid. She's been working against them out of sight, just like Shinichi." Ran may not know everything that has happened, but this she does know.

"Look. I can vouch for her," Shinichi says. "Please. Trust me?"

"To look out for Ran's well-being if nothing else, I'll give you that," her father says. "You're still going to tell me what else you left out." It's a demand, not a request. Shinichi's eyes narrow, his expression, resolute.

Another knock on the door. "Oh, for the love of—" her father starts. He doesn't get to finish before two more people enter: Assistant Inspector Satō and Detective Takagi.

Ran wonders why they're here. They both focus primarily on homicide, and it's not like the smaller prefectures where the size means working on something else as needed. Ran bites her lip, then winces as she realizes it's only slightly healed. It's a habit she needs to break.

Inspector Yokomizo stands, walking over to them both. He and Detective Satō have a hurried, whispered conversation before he claps a hand on her shoulder and departs, giving a quick farewell.

"I'm told you need an escort back to Beika?" Detective Satō says cheerfully, jerking her thumb towards the door and towards the Tokyo itself. "I'm assuming it's you, Detective Mōri?"

"Not really," her father says gruffly. "It's for my daughter and the brat on the bed. Whose idea was this?" Ran's father says, instantly suspicious.

Takagi mouths 'daughter,' presumably looking around the room for Ran and frowning when he can't find her. At her father's glare, he shakes his head. "Um, Inspector Megure got a call from an old friend? Said to only send people he absolutely trusted to pick up a couple of patients from this hospital room?" Detective Takagi sounds almost bewildered. "So he sent us."

"That sounds like my father's doing," Shinichi says. "We can trust these two. They need to know."

"Know what?" Satō says, confused.

"He knew?" Ran's father says.

"Conan?" Detective Takagi says. "Whoa, you look rough."

"So does your little friend there," Detective Satō adds, peering over to look at Ran. "Say, don't you look an awful lot like Ran?"

Ran squeaks and hides behind Shinichi's shoulder, peeking out above it before realizing the futility of it. "Um, I am?" Ran says. She bows. "Please take care of me."

"You're not," Detective Satō says. "You can't be." Her expression is slightly amused but patient, like she's wondering when she's going to be let in on the joke.

"Wait, that's Ms. Ran?" Detective Takagi says, but he's staring hard at Shinichi, thoughts whirring, the progression clearly visible across his face. Confusion, contemplation, realization, shock, awe, acceptance.

"Of course he knew," Shinichi says. "Made sure I knew how reckless I was, too."

"Why didn't he come himself?" Hattori wonders. "It hasn't stopped him before."

"Probably didn't want to make things worse, depending on what he's heard," Shinichi says. "If I know him, he'll be rallying his contacts. It's my problem and he's been content to let me deal with it, but I'm guessing that changed with my disappearance. He thinks I can't handle it," Shinichi says, sounding offended.

That's right. Shinichi's father knew it was a matter of pride for Shinichi handle his own battles. For his father to have to interfere must hurt. "It's bigger than us now," Ran reminds him gently. "With so much against us, more people can only help at this point."

"She's right, ya know. Informed decisions are better decisions," Hattori says.

"Which reminds me," her mother says. "I _will_ be having words with Yukiko about this. Yuusaku, too."

"Yeah, join the club," her father says.

"Kudō?" Takagi says slowly. "Kudō Shinichi?" he says faintly, looking from Ran to Shinichi and back again.

Shinichi lifts his head. "Hmm?" Then he blinks slowly, narrowing his eyes to look at the nervous police detective. "Oh, right. Yeah. You don't know. Yeah. That's me."

"You doing all right, Shinichi?" Ran asks as he rubs at his eyes.

Shinichi's blinking hard, face contorting. He looks like a sleepy child way past his bedtime, forcing himself to stay awake. "Yeah. Just tired."

"That makes sense," says Takagi, still stuck. "That time…" he trails off, "all the rest, that was you," he says. "You saved my life."

"What? Are you telling me— " Satō begins. "It can't be. That's impossible." But her eyes are wide, and the longer she looks at Ran the more Ran thinks she's coming to believe it.

"Oh yeah, it's possible," Hattori says. "Either that or we're all havin' some kind of mass hallucination. I'm sure you know which one's the more likely."

Hattori starts to fill the two in on what he knows. She and Shinichi will have to tell them everything again, but she can't, not right now, and Shinichi looks like he's about to keel over. It will be better to wait, at least for the moment.

Ran tunes him out. "How close are we to being discharged?" Ran asks her parents while Hattori is talking to the police detectives. She just wants to go home and take a long, long nap.

"Oh, the doctors were apparently just waiting for a guardian to sign off on the paperwork. Ideally they'd like you to stay a few more days for observation, but they've done pretty much all they can. You just need time, and rest," her mother says. "You can get that back at the Agency. They were reluctant to give me the information, but no one else has come forward to claim you." Her mother cracks her neck, looks down, rubs her forehead with her fingers and thumb. "I don't even know how to begin explaining this."

"We can't, not to the general public at least," Shinichi says. "I think I've had enough of being an experiment for the time being."

Oh, Ran hasn't even thought of that possibility. "But we won't be for long, right?"

"Depends. If she knows who took us, she might be in fight-or-flight," Shinichi says. "We were missing long enough she might have holed up somewhere."

"Well I don't blame her," Ran says. She can't even imagine working closely with those people.

"And if the data I uploaded is viable."

"It better be after all we went through to get it," Ran says darkly.

"But she can make a cure, right?" her father says. "Who is 'she' anyway?" he wonders. "Not little Ayumi?" Ran groans internally. She knows her father is smart, but sometimes she wonders. Considering that Ai is the only one without relatives and the only other girl in Conan's friend group…

"No, not her," is all Shinichi says. Her father is looking away, scowling at something Hattori had said, and Shinichi is smiling at her father's back like he's fond.

* * *

Ran spaces out a little after that as they go through the motions of filling out their paperwork so they can go home. It's not long before she and Shinichi are tucked inside the back of an unmarked police car, her mother sitting in the front seat and her father in another car.

Her parents' truce is apparently over. They'd argued about who went where, too, and her mother had won.

Hattori is coming back to Tokyo with them. He'd argued with Shinichi there was safety in numbers. Shinichi had argued it made them easier to hit, so they'd eventually agreed to spread them out in different vehicles, renting another car.

She and Shinichi being the prime targets are in the center of the secret procession. Shinichi is already asleep against the door, having lost his fight with consciousness a long time ago.

She's tired too, but she stays awake, just for a little while, just to watch him breathe, his sleep peaceful and pain-free. Something in her eases a bit. Alive they remain, even though it feels like a dream. Being caught, escaping, making it out alive…she shivers.

Maybe someday it won't feel like a dream.

Hattori and Shinichi are already making plans for his return as Kudō Shinichi and maybe striking back at the people in black; her father demanded he be let in on the plans too, and then Satō wouldn't be left behind the more she heard, pulling Takagi in with her.

Once Yokomizo knew the significance, he told them the pharmaceutical company slash prison they had been inhabiting burned before the police could raid it. Ran's not really surprised. The police are still going through the evidence, Ran knows they won't find anything. It means Shinichi won't be implicated at all for Gin's death.

Gin apparently didn't exist. Ran wonders what that means for him, for them.

There's an uncertain future ahead of them, but for the first time since this all began, Ran feels truly hopeful.

She looks at her small hands. If Ai can make a permanent antidote—

One last trial and then—

Who knows?


	29. R E V E R T

Ran doesn't think she's ever been so grateful to see the professor's house. She'd slept for most of the two and a half hour trip back to Tokyo, though it wasn't restful, having been startled out of sleep several times by nightmares. She'd woken up to find Shinichi watching her, then he'd looked away with a blush on his face as soon as he noticed she was awake.

It has her giggling, even just the memory. He's still a bit silly. It's not like he has to hide it anymore. They're _dating_. There's a warm feeling growing inside her, spreading from the depths of her heart. It's happiness, she thinks, pure unadulterated happiness. Their relationship is still so new. But at the same time, it's the most natural thing in the world. Nothing has changed, not really. Just labels. They're still the same as they ever were. And she's relieved.

As they reach the Beika Ward of Tokyo, Shinichi asks, "Can we drop by the Professor's?" They're meant to take them all straight to the Agency.

Detective Satō catches Shinichi's eyes in the rear-view mirror, furrows her brow. She twists her lip for just a moment, running it through in her head. "Sure," Detective Satō says, navigating to their district. Ahh, Ran thinks she knows what he's doing. She's not sure if it's the best idea, though. But that's Shinichi. Calculated recklessness, always. Sometimes just plain recklessness. He wants to check on Ai, make sure she's all right.

For all he tries to hide it, he has a good heart. And even with Hattori's unintentional revealing, out of all of them right now, she's the least protected, the one whose intentions are the most likely to be questioned. Ran's been told countless times that she sees too much of the good in people, and she still doesn't know everything, but she knows enough about this.

Sherry…Ai is a good person. Ran feels it in her heart, and it's only been supported by what she's seen of her so far.

They must make a strange procession, all of them descending on the Professor like this. Her parents, Shinichi, her, the two officers, Hattori. Satō stands outside, keeping watch, while they are welcomed in by the professor.

As soon as Agasa opens the door, Shinichi's met by the rest of the Detective Boys. They look over from where they're watching something on the television. Agasa moves out of the way of furious feet, heading to the kitchen to get them some refreshments.

"Conan!" Genta bellows, echoed by Ayumi and Mitsuhiko's more polite greetings. The three of them sweep him into a hug, ignoring his crutches, and they fall over in a pile of kids, arms and legs tangled, careless and free and unconcerned with appearance in the way only young children are. Shinichi is bewildered, under all of them, the top of his head only barely visible. Luckily, as rambunctious as they are, they're being careful with his injured leg and shoulder.

"We missed you!" Ayumi says.

"Where have you been?" Mitsuhiko says.

"What happened to your face?" Genta says. Shinichi blinks, overwhelmed by the volume of questions directed at him. He doesn't answer any of them. They're going by too fast.

"What happened to your leg?" Ayumi says.

"Who is she?" Mitsuhiko says, pointing at Ran.

That one Shinichi does answer. "My girlfriend!" he says proudly.

"What?" That's Ayumi, and she looks perilously close to tears. Aww. She must have had a crush.

"Really?" Relief washes over Mitsuhiko's face.

"No way!" Genta says. "She's too pretty for you! Even with all the bruises." Ran blushes.

"Now now, leave him alone, he's been hurt," Professor Agasa says as he comes back in, shooing them off. They all groan good-naturedly, but they still move and give Shinichi space.

"Genta is right. You look terrible," Agasa says to Shinichi.

"Where's Haibara?" Shinichi asks Professor Agasa. "Is she all right? You haven't had any problems with _them_ , have you?"

"Right to the point, huh, Kudō?" Hattori mutters, having heard.

Agasa shakes his head. "Nothing, other than you going missing." Then he frowns. "She's been in her lab since she received that weird email. She said it contained notes on the—" that's when he sees Ran's parents, they having waited until the children moved out of the doorway. "What are they doing here?" And then he notices Ran, his eyes widening behind his spectacles. "You're—"

"Hi, Professor," Ran says, giving a little wave. She shouldn't really find it amusing, but she does.

Agasa just takes a deep breath. "It really was _them_ , wasn't it?" Agasa says, pulling at his moustache, anxious, worried. "You both look terrible." He sits down hard on the sofa, putting a hand on his forehead. He's taken it the best out of everyone so far.

"You knew, too?" her father says, irritated. "Was I the only one in Beika who didn't?" he throws his hands up into the air.

Her mother rolls her eyes, whispering something under her breath. "So much for the 'Great Mōri Kogorō.'"

"I didn't," Takagi says.

Her father whirls on him. "You don't count!" he yells, spittle flying from his mouth. Takagi shrinks back a little bit.

"Knew what?" Ayumi pipes up, curious, looking between them. She still looks a little sad, but she has recovered from her disappointment rather quickly.

There's an awkward silence as all the adults exchange glances. Hattori looks up at the ceiling.

Ran bumps shoulders with Shinichi. He has a crestfallen expression on his face; he's hesitant, unsure. Because in this too, Ran knows how much these friendships mean to him. Even Ran really didn't like him when they first met. And he may try to hide it, but Ran knows the loss of the Detective Boys would hurt him.

Agasa clears his throat, attempting to change the subject. "Anyway, the children came by, hoping to pry Ai out for some time at the park, but—" he looks towards the door. "Even they haven't been successful. I'm starting to get worried."

"What do you mean, 'know'"? Genta asks.

"Yeah! Don't leave us out because we're kids! We get that all of the time!" Ayumi pouts.

Shinichi takes them all in in one glance, then he says, "I lied to you guys about being Conan. I'm sorry."

"Well, if you're not Conan, then who are you?" Genta asks getting into Shinichi's face.

Shinichi holds his hands up, laughing nervously. "Remember Shinichi?"

"You're Mr. Shinichi?" Mitsuhiko says, jumping immediately to the right conclusion, regardless of logic. Shinichi nods. "Neat!"

"Yeah, that's so cool! How did it happen? Will it happen to us when we get older?" Ayumi says, jumping up and down.

"I don't think it works like that," Shinichi says faintly, sounding overwhelmed. Children are surprisingly adaptable, Ran muses. Free-thinkers, not boxed in by adult concepts of the way things must be.

"It happened to you and Ran," Genta points out. He elbows him in the side. "I knew you had a crush on her," he says, snickering.

"You did not," Shinichi says, annoyed, and elbows him back for good measure.

"Good to see you acting your age, Edogawa," says a small, stern voice.

Ran looks over, and it's Haibara Ai in a lab coat, having come out of the back room. She looks terrible: her hair's a tangled mess, she has ink stains on her fingers and face, and deep purple bags under her eyes. "You're all making such a racket, it's hard to think," she says, surveying the room. When her eyes catch Ran's, they widen slightly, but otherwise, there is no change in expression. "Please keep it down," she says, before turning to go back to her room.

"So the data is viable?" Shinichi asks, and oh, Ran kind of wants to hit him as Ai's face hardens when she looks back at him. She loves him, but sometimes he has no sensitivity whatsoever.

"Yes," she says, missish. Her hands are clenched at her sides; Ran can see they're shaking, and walks back to the room she'd just departed. Ran grabs some refreshments, what looks like a bento and a couple of juice boxes, and just makes it inside before Ai closes and locks the door. Her feet hurt from the careless walking, but it is worth it, just for Ai's shocked face.

"Have you eaten anything today?" Ran asks her, holding out the bento as sort of a peace offering, an apology for Shinichi's words.

Ai looks at her a long, long moment, her expression inscrutable. "No," she says finally.

Ran moves it a little, gesturing for her to take it. With a sigh, and a pinch of the bridge of her nose, Ai finally does. Her hands shake as she takes it, sitting at the small daybed. She attempts to eat some of the rice and drops the chopsticks because of her unsteady hands.

Ran's not going to ask her if she's all right. It's a stupid question, and Ran already knows the answer. What she does say is this, "It's all right to take a break, you know."

"Is it?" Ai says, almost absentmindedly. "I thought you of all people would want to get back to normal as quickly as possible."

"I don't mind waiting," Ran says.

A scoff. "That's obvious."

Ran frowns. It's not exactly hostile, just wary, and a clear reference to all the times Shinichi has let Ran down, left her behind. She wonders if Ai feels the same way, that Shinichi has done that to Ai, too.

So she makes a decision. Ran hugs her. Ai's too surprised to push her away at first, and then by the time it sinks in, Ran has her in a good hold. "I'm worried about you," Ran says. "We're all worried about you."

"You shouldn't be," Ai says to her shoulder. She doesn't try to pull away, but she doesn't hug back, either. She just accepts it. Ran wonders how many times in her life she's just had to accept things as they were without any thought of how she must feel.

"You don't get to decide that," Ran says. "You don't get to tell us how we feel about you."

"And what about how I feel?" Ai raises her voice, the words coming out harsh. "Doesn't that matter?"

Ran takes it in stride. "Of course it matters," she says. "You matter." She tightens her arms. "I'm here if you want to talk about it, or just want to talk."

"Don't patronise me!" Ai says, and this time it's definitely a shout. Ran winces, flinches back a little. She yanks herself out of Ran's arms, and Ran lets her go.

"I'm not. You're more than what you've done, you know."

"What would you know about it?" Ai snaps, and she's definitely hostile now. Ran doesn't take it personally, since it looks like she finally hit the nerve she was aiming for.

"Madeira talked about you," Ran says, "Sherry." Ai freezes. "That's right. I know more than you think I do."

"I don't recognise that code name," Ai says, and her voice is small.

"She was the scientist assigned to the detective project after you left. The one who worked on me," Ran says, calmer than she feels. If she closes her eyes, she can see Gin falling, she can feel the cold lab table kissing her skin. "It was going to happen whether you were the head of the project or not, Ai."

"Don't speak to me so familiarly," Ai mutters.

"Haibara, then," Ran says. "You chose to leave."

"They killed my sister."

"Even so, you could have stayed and finished your work for them. Kept your head down and your mouth shut. You didn't have to take a stand."

"What kind of monster—" Ai begins, then trails off.

"Exactly," Ran says. "People are allowed to change. You're not the choices you've made."

"That's easy for you to say. What have you ever done?" Ai asks her, and it sounds desperate. Ran doesn't blame her. Ai's hungry, and tired, not thinking straight, and pushing herself too hard because of guilt. It's destroyed lesser people.

Ran closes her eyes, thinks back to scissors in her hands and the lack of air, purple spots in front of her eyes, dark thoughts in her mind and greying vision, sound of cracking bone ringing in her ears. It's threatening to destroy her. "Enough," she says, eyes still closed, "I've done enough," she repeats.

"How can you stand it?" Ai asks.

"I take it a day at a time," she says, opening her eyes to find Ai watching her.

"And if that doesn't work?"

"Then I take it an hour, a minute, a second at a time," Ran wrings her hands. "I met your sister, you know. She was nice." She's not sure if this is the direction she should be going in, but it feels right.

"She deserved better," Ai says bitterly.

Ran nods. "Yes, she did. And so do you," Ran says. "You don't have to spend the rest of your life paying for your mistakes."

"You don't understand. People are dead because of me." Ai's being dreadfully honest. Ran's not sure if it's because she's so tired or Ran finally knows, but it's something she's been holding in for a long time. And with Shinichi being the only other one…she loves that boy, but sometimes he emulates Holmes a little too much when he shouldn't, especially where emotions are concerned. How long has Ai been keeping this in? It can't have been good for her.

"No, I don't. And I'm not going to pretend I do. I can't even imagine the things you've been through or the choices you had to make," She walks forward, limping, one hand on the desk for balance. "What I can do is be here for you if you need me," Ran says, reaching out her hand. "In whatever form you need that to take."

Ai stares at her hand for the longest time, a river formed between her brows. "Not all of us can be you," she says at length.

"Just the fact you're here at all says enough, Haibara," Ran says. Much to her embarrassment, her eyes are welling up with tears again, and now her own hand is shaking. "Can't you see that? Because of you, we have a chance of getting back to who we used to be." She doesn't say normal because normal is relative.

"If it weren't for me, you wouldn't be like this to begin with," Ai says.

"I'm not so sure. Shinichi said both your work and hers was based on an older project," Ran says. She takes her other hand and rubs at her face, attempting to stop the flow of tears. She's such a stupid crybaby; why does she have to be like this? "It would have—It would have probably happened anyway."

"You're crying," Ai says, bewildered.

"S-sorry, I can't help it," Ran says. "It's just so sad!"

Ai shakes her head. "Just like Akemi," Ai says, and then she's crying, too, throwing her arms around Ran, hugging her tightly, twisting her hands in her dress. Ran holds her until they're both cried out, giving Ai her handkerchief.

"Feel better?" Ran asks. "Please take a break," she begs, as Ai wipes her eyes and blows her nose.

"Yeah." She picks up the bento and eats; her hands are steadier. Ran makes sure she drinks both juice boxes to keep her energy up. When she's done, Ran pulls out her comb and gets to work on her hair.

"You don't have to treat me like a child," Ai says, cracking a huge yawn.

"I'm not. It might make you feel better, that's all," Ran says. "It always helps me when I don't feel so well." She's gentle, with the tangles, starting from the bottom and working her way up, and Ai doesn't say anything else, which is as good as permission. When she's done, Ran arranges the bed, makes her lie down.

It's a token of how tired Ai is she doesn't protest, not even when Ran covers her with her own lab coat.

Ran leaves when she's asleep, closing the door behind her softly so it won't wake her.

There's a whole chorus of questions and comments directed at her; Ran looks every single person in the eye and says, "We're coming back later," in a tone as firm as her girlish voice can manage.

"But—" Shinichi and her father try to protest almost as one.

Ran smiles sweetly. " I said we're coming back **later**."

Her father and Shinichi both shudder. Her mother looks rather proud.

Ahh, Ran still has it.

* * *

Only three days later, and she and Shinichi are back in Ai's lab, thankfully away from her still hovering parents for the moment, and Ai is handing each of them a pill. It's an innocuous little thing, and it doesn't look like some kind of concentrated growth serum. She says as much.

Ai twists her lip, a wry thing. "Looks can be deceiving," she said. "I tested it the best I could in the time I was given. The nucleic acid chains appear stable. The rats I dosed with apotoxin and again with the regen-idote don't appear to have any adverse side effects after a day of careful observation. Ideally, I'd like to wait a month or to perform more clinical tests, get a bigger sample size, but," they both look over to Shinichi, who is fidgeting. " _somebody_ doesn't want to wait. You sure you're fine with it?" She directs that question to Ran. "Because you know I would prefer you to wait. I'm still only ninety-three point zero six percent certain this will work, and unexpected side effects might yet develop."

Ran nods. "I have faith in you, Haibara," Ran says.

A faint smile crosses Ai's face. "Ai. It's Ai."

"Then it's Ran." She returns the smile. "I'm not worried. Not with you looking out for us."

Shinichi's eyes flicker back and forth between them as Ai checks his blood pressure one last time. "When did you two become such good friends?" he asks.

Ai ignores his question. "Are you ready?" she asks instead, noting down the last of his vitals.

"As I'll ever be," Shinichi says.

"Yes," Ran says, and she takes the pill.


	30. R E B O R N

Shinichi's in a walking cast with his arm around Ran's waist. Ran rests her hand over his as they travel the familiar pathway to Teitan High School. They're walking slowly, but they're walking.

She only spent a few days as her younger self, but it left an impact. She keeps misjudging distance and nearly falling over, for one, having to readjust. Even her kata are giving her trouble, and she's grateful she won't have any competitions for a while until she gets used to her body. Her feet are healing, but they're still a little sensitive, and sometimes the uneven pavement makes her stumble. She doesn't care. It's a price she'd gladly pay again and again.

So in a way, they're holding each other up as they walk. Maybe together they make one whole person.

Going back to school is strange. It's a walk they've taken a million times before. Before, it was just them. Later it was her, and Sera, and Sonoko, and Shinichi, though she didn't know it at the time.

Now, with their two and a half week absence from school, it's just her and Shinichi again.

Ai had declined to take the antidote with them. Ran is afraid she knows why, but she understands. She might be tempted to do the same.

For now, she leans into Shinichi's shoulder as they walk, taking comfort from him. He smells like laundry detergent and the faintest hint of deodorant, like coffee and old books. It's a smell she associates with knowledge, with late night case files, with intelligence.

It's a walk they've taken a million times before, but it couldn't be any more different. No arguing for one; secondly, as she squeezes his hand, he tightens his grip around her waist, pulling her closer to him. He's a little taller now, his chin a little squarer, with more stubble than she can remember him having before. It has been months, true, and Ai had said it was his body playing catch-up.

Ran doesn't feel any different herself.

It's awfully bold, being this touchy-feely in public but really, Ran can't bring herself to care. Not anymore. Not when she almost lost him so many times. Ran watches him as they walk, letting him guide them, looking at the yellowing bruises, the black eye nearly healed. Remembering what he did for her, just him as person, everything about who he is: his brilliance, his strength, his kindness, even his barbed wit…A warm feeling overwhelms her, nearly taking her breath away. Her heart hurts—is it supposed to do that when she's happy? Like someone's wringing it, a heavy weight pressing against her chest. It _hurts_.

Is that why they call it tenderness?

It's too much. It has to go somewhere. She leans over, presses a chaste kiss to the side of his jaw; the faintest hint of a beard scrapes her lips. It tickles a little. He's going to have to start shaving soon, if he hasn't already. He pulls back, touching his jawline with his fingertips. "What was that for?" he asks, stunned. He's still like that every time she kisses him. She hopes his surprise never wears off.

"Oh, no reason," she says, smiling, pulling away, holding her bag in front of her so it hits her legs as she walks. There's almost a spring in her step.

"Hey, come on, tell me," Shinichi whines, hobbling after her. She lets him get close, then she leans over, kisses his nose, and moves back out of his reach.

Shinichi's eyes narrow, but the corner of his mouth twists into a grin. "Oh, is that how it's going to be?"

Ran giggles. "I'll tell you when you catch me!" she says. "If you want to know so badly."

Every time he nearly catches her, she darts away, her long hair flowing in the breeze. "Picking on me because I'm injured," he grumbles.

"No," she says. "Picking on you because you're you." She takes a deep breath and says in her most professional voice. "'Remember not to theorize before you have the facts unless you want your judgement to be biased.'" She tsks. "I thought you were a detective," she says, shaking her head, hands on her hips.

"That's Holmes!" Shinichi says, eyes wide.

Ran tilts her head to the side, tapping her lip with her forefinger. "It is?" she says innocently. "I had no idea." Nope. She'd totally not read the whole collected works because he enjoyed it, nope not at all. Even though it wasn't really her thing.

Shinichi rolls his eyes, and she giggles again. He gets close, making a grab for her again and she kisses him on the cheek this time before running away again. He makes a noise of frustration, but it's nothing serious; the grin on his face shows that.

They're at the school gates when she finally lets him catch her but she's hardly aware of their location, she doesn't care that they're in public; he sweeps her up into his arms and kisses her full on the mouth. She wraps her arms around his neck, nesting her fingers in his hair and pulling him closer, kissing him deeper. They're both inexperienced kissers but neither one of them care; they may bump noses and knock teeth, but it doesn't matter, they'll learn, nothing matters right now, nothing but each other.

"OH. MY. GOD," says a strident female voice. Behind them, there's the sound of wolf-whistles and clapping, and a cresting swell of romantic, victorious music. Ran pulls away with a red face, realizing just where she's at, embarrassed about being caught in public and by so many people, and oh, the music club has their instruments out, playing. They must think they're so funny.

The voice is Sonoko's, and Sera's right beside her, hand over her mouth, laughing. Sera stops long enough to say, "So is that why Sonoko calls him your husband?"

"Well, not yet," Ran sing-songs. "Shinichi, when are you going to propose?" she asks him, tapping her wrist, just to tease.

His ears pink, and he mumbles, "I'll get right on that," before muttering something uncomplimentary under his breath about Sonoko.

"Oh? You do that, 'Husband,'" she says, and his face reddens. Ran doesn't think she'll ever get tired of that blush.

Then, "…We should probably graduate first?" he says to himself. It's quiet, and she doesn't think anyone but her hears it, but he sounds like he's seriously contemplating it. Her heart swells again. Shinichi is adorable.

"When did this happen?" Sonoko says. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It's a new development," Ran says. "Really, really new."

"Does it have anything to do with why he's in a cast and you both look like you've been beat to hell and back?" Sera asks, perceptive as usual. "And why your missing boyfriend is here?"

"I don't know how much I can say," Ran says honestly. "But yes, it was part of his case."

Sera's eyes narrow. "Oh? The reason why he was gone for so long?"

"Yes," Shinichi says. "It's definitely part of the reason I was gone for so long." He and Sera are giving one another searching looks. It's almost like a stand-off, the way they are watching one another, seeing if the other measures up.

"Have we been properly introduced? Kudō Shinichi," Shinichi says, holding out his hand.

"I know," Sera says, taking it and gripping his hand hard. "Sera Masumi," she grins. It's fierce.

"I know," Shinichi says, and he tightens his grip, matching her grin with his own.

"—Detective," they chorus.

Something's happening here, something over Ran's head. She knows it's there, but she doesn't know what it is. Only both of them find it serious. There's a fire between them, a thread of something unsaid, something they're alluding to that only the other one knows.

Sera looks like she's going to say something else, but just like that, the bell rings and the crowd disperses, walking to class. Sera takes the opportunity to dart off to who-knows-where, phone out.

Some of his old soccer friends find Shinichi, and they're ribbing at him for his relationship with Ran. Before he would have blown it off, pretended like it was less than it was, but now he says, "Oh yeah? Well, I know you're only saying that because you're jealous _you_ don't have a steady girlfriend. I don't need to be a detective to deduce that."

"Haha!" his long-haired friend crows.

But he won't let it go. "It's not fair, why do you have to get all the girls? And Ran is so hot—"

Shinichi spins on his walking cast, leaning on one of the boys so all his weight is not on his hurt foot, and kicks a rock so hard that it cracks a wall. " **Don't** talk about my girlfriend like that," he says, hobbling away, nose up in the air. "Treat her with more respect, or that will be you," he says. Then the boys start 'oohing' and laughing at the one that spoke.

"Whoa," another one says. "Kudō's changed, hasn't he?"

"Let's face it; with a babe like that, you'd be the same way."

"Better not let Kudō hear you say that," the first says, laughing. The other one shudders.

Sonoko walks up beside her, worry in her eyes. "Ran, are you really all right?" she asks. "You were gone, everyone was looking for you. I asked my father and we sent out people to help, but no one could find any trace of you, and—"

"It's all right, Sonoko," Ran says. "We're fine now."

"Fine _now_ ," Sonoko stresses, catching the deflection.

"Well, yes, that's true," Ran says.

"Tell me honestly; how bad was it?" Sonoko asks.

Ran looks away, her gaze distant. "Bad. It was bad," she admits.

"Ran, I'm so sorry," Sonoko says.

Ran takes a deep breath. She knows Sonoko is just trying to help, and she feels grateful, but it's also bringing her back there, to that cold cell. She'll think about it and process it later, but for right now, she just wants to forget about it for a while. "It happened. It's over. Can't change the past now," she says. All that's left is the healing.

"Is that why the police are here?" Sonoko whispers to her. "They're plainclothes but I recognise several of them from some of your father's cases."

Ran starts. They are there, now that she looks. Detective Takagi had mentioned something about a thoroughly vetted protective detail. "One of the reasons, yes."

She opens her mouth to say more, but up ahead, Shinichi has started talking seriously to another student who has a worried look on her face. He's got this shifty look, glancing surreptitiously back at her, starts edging toward the side gate, acting like he's already trying to ditch school. Ran has been friends with him since they were young: she recognises that face.

Case Face.

"Oh no, you don't!" she says as she stalks up to him, grabbing him by the back of the blazer one-handed and lifting him like she used to do when he was Conan, out of force of habit.

Or tries to, anyway.

She's strong, but she cannot lift an almost fully grown man one-handed. What she actually does is pull him backwards, yanking his blazer so it jerks him by the armpits. He steps back, landing badly on his hurt foot, and then his arms start pinwheeling as he can't catch his balance and he falls backwards, right into Ran. Ran's not ready for his weight, so she falls too, hitting the ground hard, managing to shift the weight so she lands on her tail, elbows, and palms, rather than her head or spine. She leans back, head against the ground.

Shinichi turns, trying to get up, and can't get leverage with his hurt foot. He slips. One knee is between her legs, and he faceplants right into her bosom. He scrambles up on his hands almost immediately, his face burning.

They're still close. "Hi," Ran says, out of breath, winded from the fall.

"Hi," Shinichi says, just as breathless.

"You better not be thinking about ditching school already," she scolds.

"I'm not a child anymore," he says.

"Well, quit acting like it!" Ran says.

He opens his mouth to argue, and she kisses him again.

It shuts him up really quick. Ran slides out from under him and stands, holding out her hand to help him up. He takes it, but not without saying, "That's not always going to work, you know," he complains.

"It worked just then, didn't it?" Ran says.

Sonoko's staring at them both, wide-eyed.

"What?" they say in unison.

Sonoko holds her hands up. "Nothing!" She backs away. "Nothing at all," she says again as she heads towards the classroom, shaking her head.

Then Sera walks up to them, grim expression on her face. Her hand is clenched tightly around her mobile. "I need to talk to you, Kudō, after school." Her eyes flicker over to Ran. "I need to talk to you both."

* * *

To be continued in the _three pipe problem_ , the thrilling conclusion to _seven per-cent solution_.

* * *

So this is the end of this particular tale. There will also be a sequel, but not until I finish some of my current WIPs. Please be patient with me. Thanks to everyone for sticking with me; this is my first completed semi-longfic in this fandom and everyone has been really, really kind to me. Thank you all for supporting me: I couldn't have done it without you. Your kindness keeps me writing. :D I will forever be grateful.

It started out as a silly little fic-mas prompt thing, but it became so much more.

Thank you all _so_ much,

Angel


	31. K O G O R Ō

Kogorō doesn't think anything of it when Ran's a little late for dinner, even though she'd promised to be back in time to cook. He grumbles to himself of course, heads to the corner store for a convenience bento, comes back home with a couple cases of beer instead and flips the television on in the office, popping the top off one of the beer cans and taking a long swig.

She's out with that detective brat and it won't be the first time she's been out this late, not with him. Means Ran's not there to ride herd on him. He can do whatever he wants.

He doesn't let his mind linger on the slight feeling of hurt, or on the emptiness he feels when he's alone, but then he never lets himself linger on that Eri-shaped space. He fills it with the bread-bitter taste of beer, that nice floating buzz, the acrid burn of cigarettes. He drinks until sleep creeps up on him and he passes out at his desk in the Agency proper with empty cans cluttered all around him.

Kogorō wakes up late the next morning with the taste of ash in his mouth and a crick in his neck and a sharp ache in his back. He moves, and then a clatter-crash sound of aluminium cans has him jumping out of his seat in a judō pose, ready to throw down his attacker.

But it's just him.

Too old for sleeping at his desk. He blinks, then looks at the time and panics. Ran never lets him sleep this late, and usually she would have cleaned up his desk and scolded him by now, the very picture of her mother.

She looks a lot like Eri these days. Has the personality too, worse luck. But his face softens as he thinks of them, though he would deny it if anyone asked. He walks through their office, then climbs the stairs to their home, calling out Ran's name out.

There's no answer.

Unease creeps through Kogorō. It's not like Ran to just disappear like this. If they had been going camping or skiing, or somewhere else where the mobile reception was bad, Kogorō would understand, but they were supposed to be in the middle of Tokyo and she was supposed to be home last night.

He stalks back to his desk, sits down hard, grabs the landline, angrily punching in the numbers.

His first call is to the Kudō house, but he gets the machine. Typical these days. Not even the whatever guy that's staying there right now answers. Where is that damn boy?

His second call is to Suzuki Sonoko, but it doesn't take a minute talking to her to realize that she hasn't taken his daughter this time. Ran would have let him know right away anyway if something like that had happened. It was a reach.

Unease growing, his third call is to his erstwhile wife. She picks up immediately. "Kogorō. To what do I owe this pleasure?" her tone makes it clear that it isn't.

"Eri," he grumbles without preamble. "Is Ran with you?"

"No. I would have let you know. What's going on?" Eri says sharply.

"Ran didn't come home last night."

"Call the police," she demands, then hangs up on him.

Not there either, then. "I was going to, woman!" he snaps at the dial tone. Damn. Still so bossy. Like that wasn't going to be his next move. Still, Ran just wouldn't leave like this, not for this long without any word. A brick forms in his gut, but he does the best he can to ignore it.

He sighs, then dials Megure. "Megure," he says in lieu of a hello when he answers.

"Ah, Mōri. Is it another case?" the man asks, long-suffering in his voice.

"My daughter is missing," he says without preamble. He's being rude, but damn it all, it's his daughter.

"You know we're Criminal Investigation. You'd have better luck reporting it to Beika Ward Precinct," Megure says.

"Ran was out with Kudō Shinichi last night. She didn't come home."

"Are you sure it's not teenagers being teenagers?" Megure asks. But there's hesitation in his voice, the slightest curl of worry.

"...It's Ran," Kogorō says like it's an explanation.

"Good point," Megure says. "She's a responsible girl."

"It's not like her. She's been missing since last night, and I can't get in touch with either one of them. It might have something to do with a former client or someone I've helped arrest." It's fine if it's just directed towards him. But one unfortunate side effect of his fame has been the number of loonies who've tried to use his daughter as leverage. He doesn't show how much that fear curls around his stomach, pretending like it doesn't affect him at all.

"Can you think of anyone in particular?" Megure asks.

Kogorō shakes his head. "No one recent, but it can't be ruled out."

"The mention of Shinichi has me a little worried," Megure says.

"You're talking about how he's ditched school and my daughter and won't come around unless he needs something?" Kogorō says, picking at his ear with his little finger, then sniffing it. The bitter smell of earwax assaults his nostrils, and he wrinkles his nose.

"No. Don't you find it a little strange? The times I've met him lately, he's wanted to keep his name out of the papers and the police reports, almost like he was hiding," Megure says. "It is unusual for him to want discretion."

"It's true he's an arrogant and dramatic little brat. That is unlike him." Kogorō says.

"You're one to talk," Megure mutters.

"What did you say?" Kogorō asks.

"Nothing, nothing," Megure says. "I'm worried he's in something over his head."

"Eh, you know how kids his age are," Kogorō says flippantly, but it's only to hide his growing uneasiness. It has been several months since that brat had really spent any length of time around him. Around the time the little moocher came into their lives, come to think of it. And he has been weird, too. Acting all shifty and weird, elusive like a ghost and showing up at the strangest of times.

"Give me the details and I'll have my officers keep an eye out," Megure says.

Kogorō gives him the time and date to the best of his knowledge, as well as the name of the restaurant they were supposed to go to.

Megure whistles. "That one? Kudō sure has rich taste for teenager. When I was courting Midori as a young policeman, we considered fast food expensive!"

"What?" Kogorō says.

"Come to think of it, when I met him on that CEO murder case, Shinichi and Ms. Ran were eating out at a fancy restaurant then, too."

Kogorō clenches his fist. "If he thinks he can seduce my daughter into eloping by enticing her with expensive meals—"

"Hold it, Mōri! I don't think Shinichi would really do that!" Megure says with a placating tone. "Come to think of it, Ms. Ran also has a tendency to get stuck on cases like you. Perhaps that's the case. I'll inform my men to keep an eye out on patrol, and I'll even have Detective Takagi search the area."

"Thanks, Megure. I'll be heading out there myself in a moment."

"Then I'll have Detective Takagi meet you there. Keep me updated, Mōri."

"Yeah. I'll call again if I find out anything new," Kogorō says, putting the phone back into its cradle. His hand reaches up to stroke his chin. It is true Ran has a tendency to get dragged into cases like him, but even then, she usually manages to find a way to call or something.

Argh, this is hurting his head. He looks at his clothes: shirt, beer stained tie, rumpled and creased trousers. Eh, they'll do. He throws on his coat, grabs his wallet and keys, and heads out the door.

He arrives the restaurant in a short amount of time, and Megure had been right. It was pretty fancy. He whistles. It shares space with a few offices and a hotel, but it is located on the ground floor.

A quick showing of his daughter's picture to the front desk showed she and that brat had arrived and eaten there.

"Do you know the time she left?"

The woman taps her chin. "About five or so? Yeah, I think it was five."

"Do you know which way she went?"

She shakes her head. "No, I'm sorry."

Kogorō fights to keep his temper down. "All right, thank you."

He walks out of the business with less of an idea than he had in the first place. Still, if there was anything detective work and being a former policeman had taught him, it was to examine all the clues, and the restaurant was his best lead. He knew Ran had been here. Therefore, some clue must be left showing where she went.

Surveillance would be a bust, Kogorō thinks, eyeing the cameras. It was a busy street, and experience had taught him many of the cameras were low quality. They could have literally gone anywhere. He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and slides one out, lighting it up with a flick of his lighter. He breathes deeply, waiting for the nicotine buzz.

He can't rush this. He glances up at the building, then back down. Standing by the entrance is a young doorman or a porter; Kogorō can't really tell from here.

If there is any chance he was working yesterday…

"Hey you," he says, shoving Ran's picture in his face. "Have you seen this girl?"

The porter goes cross-eyed for a moment. "Oh yeah. I remember her. Hard to forget someone like that. She had a nice—" his hands come down in front of his chest. Kogorō glares. "—smile. A very nice smile," the man says, rubbing the back of his neck.

Kogorō's glare intensifies. "I'm her father. When was it? Did you see which way she went?"

The porter swallows. "She was arguing with a boy, and they headed off that way?" he pointed to the right. "Towards that alley there."

"Are you sure?" Kogorō asks, narrowing his eyes.

"I remember clearly 'cause I was," he jerks at his collar, sweating as Kogorō looms. "Watching her go?" he squeaks.

"Is there anything else you can tell me?" Kogorō says.

"Uh, no…?"

"Good," Kogorō says, breathing a cloud of smoke in his face, clapping him on the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble.

He leaves the little man behind, heading to the alley beside the restaurant.

A step inside shows nothing unusual.

Kogorō puts his hands in his pockets, walking down the street, casing the place. Nothing. It had probably been too long. The rubbish has already been taken. He walks another meter in.

Nothing. It was a bust. Growing frustrated, he kicks a glass bottle at a bin, only for something black to come flying at him, screaming like a demon. Kogorō yells, stumbling back as a black cat with big yellow eyes leaps away, showing his teeth and hissing before darting past a gutter, knocking a bit of old newspaper away.

There's something caught in the edge, something dark and hard to see against an open storm drain.

He takes his handkerchief out of his pocket and slowly approaches, kneeling down to get a better look.

It's a gun, caught on the edge of the grate, hidden. Just lying there. He furrows his brow. This shouldn't be here. Not in the same alley where Ran was last seen. His stomach curls, and he leaves it there for the time being, standing, wincing as his knees pop. Kogorō cases the alley again, looking at it in a new light.

There, on the left where the concrete of the wall was weak. A fist-shaped indent, crack spreading up. He recognizes his daughter's handiwork. His eyes flicker back down to the gun.

A gun, a fist-shaped crack in the wall, and….

He leans closer. Dark spots. Dark spots on the ground blending in, leading to the opposite end of the alley before veering left and abruptly vanishing. Not as many as there should be, and it blends in with oil stains. Kogorō is no blood spatter analyst, but even he remembers that these dark firework splash patterns mean blood dripping from someone who was standing, and then they angle, as if the person was picked up and carried to a waiting vehicle. He follows the angles.

A gun, a fist-shaped crack in the wall, and….a bullet hole in the opposite wall, barely perceptible as it had gone through an old Dorcus poster. It's telling.

It hits him as strong as a punch to the gut. This was the last place Ran was seen. He clenches his fists so tightly his nails dig into his skin and his knuckles turn white. His little girl might be dead.

Overcome with anger, he swings his fist at the wall, but it does nothing but scrape his knuckles raw and bloody. His eyes burn, but he can't lose it. Not yet.

Not until he has a lead on whoever hurt his little girl.

Not until he makes them pay.

* * *

Later, Kogorō's pacing as he smokes. It's been hours. It's taking them too long to go over the scene, and they haven't been able to tell him anything he didn't already know. He hasn't been able to come up with anything they don't already know. They'd already asked the building staff about suspicious characters but it had been so long no one had any solid ideas on the people present that day, which means if she's not dead, she was probably abducted. Detective Chiba is looking at footage, but they're not hopeful.

But there's no body yet. It doesn't matter that the odds of a successful recovery fall sharply after the first twenty-four hours. There's no body yet. It's a cold comfort, but it's the only one he has right now.

"Mr. Mōri?"

He raises his head. "Eh, Takagi?"

"The gun is a nine millimeter Beretta."

"Yeah, I knew that already," Kogorō says, chewing the butt of his cigarette in his agitation.

"No, there's no serial number. It's custom made. It hasn't been filed off. It doesn't exist. Just a small engraving on the pistol butt. It looks like a little like a bottle, as a matter of fact. Inspector Megure wanted to know if that meant anything to you."

Kogorō shakes his head. He wishes it did.

"It also doesn't match ballistics. The caliber does, but the evidence points to two guns."

Two guns. Two perps for two people.

He runs his fingers through his hair, messing it up. It's at this moment he desperately wishes for a sign from his other self.

He wasted so much time. If he had just called Ran earlier, or if he had trailed her to her 'date' with that detective boy like he wanted to...

"Mr. Mōri?" Takagi asks him.

"What?" Kogorō snaps, looking up at him blearily.

"I've been trying to get your attention. You look terrible. You should probably go home," but his face is pitying, and Kogorō hates it.

"I can't go home," he says hoarsely. "Not until I find my daughter."

He paces around the crime scene again like a tiger, looking for anything, any desperate clue he might have missed earlier, much to the protest of the forensics team.

Still nothing.

Nightfall shows no lead. Kogorō stays at the crime scene until he's forcefully removed and escorted home by a couple of officers, much to his loud protests.

Kogorō wrinkles his nose, heads down into the office and parks himself at his desk by the phone.

An hour later, someone rings him.

"Mōri Detective Agency?" he says gruffly. "Any word?"

"Hey, old man! Why ain't the missy answerin' her phone?" a strident voice says. "Kazuha's gettin' pretty worried."

It's the Osaka detective brat. That gives him an idea. "Have you been able to get the other detective brat?" Kogorō asks, hope in his voice. Ran always fussed about it. Even when she didn't have the boy's number, this kid did.

"What d'ya mean?" Hattori asks. "What does that have to do with Missy...oh man, you ain't serious, are ya?"

"Ran and him went out yesterday," Kogorō says. "They didn't come home."

"What? That ain't good."

"There's more."

"Tell me everythin,'" the kid demands.

So Kogorō fills him in about the crime scene, all the details that he knows. He leaves nothing out. Normally, it would make him irritated, but he grudgingly admits the kid is actually pretty good, and if it helps him find his daughter, well.

There's pretty much nothing he won't do to get her back.

He is interrupted by frequent swearing, worse the further into the story Kogorō gets.

"I'm coming down in the mornin' on the earliest train," Hattori says when Kogorō finishes. "Kudō ain't answerin' either. Kazuha's been tryin' him."

"No," he surprises himself by saying.

"What? Why not?"

"I need someone there," Kogorō says. "Eyes."

"Ya know, for once old man, you got a pretty good idea. As a matter of fact, why don't cha call everybody you know, have 'em look too. Clients too. Between us, I think we got enough contacts to cover most of Japan, yeah?"

That's...actually a pretty good idea. Even better, people like Ms. Yōko knew a lot of people too, newscasters, actors. And the Suzukis. But... "Won't it panic the kidnappers and make them do something drastic?"

"Believe me, if they ain't dead already, then havin' as many people lookin' as possible can only help," Hattori says grimly.

"What?" Kogorō asks. "You know something you're not telling me, kid."

There's a long silence. "Maybe," the kid hedges. "Anyway, that ain't what's important right now. I'll do what I can from here and keep you posted."

Then he hangs up on him. Of all the...!

Kogorō rings the first number he thinks of, fuming.

"Mōri? This is a surprise. I didn't think you still had my number. It's been a while."

"Have you heard from your son recently, Kudō?" he asks rather rudely.

"No...what's going on?"

"Your son went out to a restaurant with my daughter and they both disappeared. I think they were kidnapped."

A sharp intake of breath. Very telling. "You saw him. You saw my son?" Kudō asks.

"Yeah," Kogorō says, a little taken aback by his forcefulness.

"In person?" Kudō presses.

"Yeah," Kogorō says, ire growing.

"Are you sure it was him?" His voice is tense, intent.

"Why wouldn't it be?"

That seems to make Kudō pause. "...Right. I'll be on the next flight out," he says, and he hangs up on him, too.

Both the kid's best friend, and the kid's father. Both of them had reacted strangely. What the hell's going on?

Kogorō knows they know something.

Over the next few days, he spends his days looking, tracking down every little lead, no matter how pointless, even going so far as to post a 5 million yen reward, gathering the money with the help of Eri.

Nothing.

He spends his nights calling, makes what must be thousands of calls. He stops at a reasonable time of night, but as soon as it's barely polite, he calls again and again and again, going through old client files, begging in a way he'd never thought he ever would.

Eri helps. Sure, they're still staying at one another's throats, but she has her mobile and she's helping him. Kudō shows up at the Agency that next morning while he's there, talks with Kogorō for a brief moment.

"I've been to the crime scene," is what he says.

"Do you have any idea who did it?" Kogorō asks.

The novelist is silent, holding his gaze, and it doesn't take a great detective to realize that it's not that he can't answer. It's that he won't.

"You bastard," he says, his fists shaking he's so angry. "You and that detective brat and the Osaka boy. What aren't you telling me?"

Kudō remains silent. "What aren't you telling me, Kudō!" Kogorō shouts, grabbing the other man by his lapels and slamming Kudō into the wall where his head hits it hard. "Where's my DAUGHTER?" he shouts, spittle flying in his face.

Kudō just looks at him. Kogorō can't stand his weighted, sad look, so he rears back and punches him in the face.

More infuriatingly, Kudō just takes it. He moves with the punch to lessen the impact, but he just takes it.

"I don't begrudge you your anger," Kudō says quietly. "But you have to remember I have lost my son as well."

Abruptly all the anger leaves Kogorō, and he feels shaky, numb. He lets go and sags against the wall.

Now that he looks, Kudō's face is grave, pinched, heavy with lines.

"They're still alive," he says. "If they killed them, if they were dead, we'd know," Kudō says. "They would let us know in the worst way possible."

"Who are they?" Kogorō asks quietly.

"We've been working against them for months," Kudō says.

"Why won't you—" Kogorō begins, and then he stops, sliding slowly to the floor, putting his forehead in his hands and grasping at his hair.

He doesn't let himself hope. Doesn't linger on the inadequacy he feels, either. Had he been a better father, he might have seen this coming. He might have been able to prevent this. How Eri was right in leaving him, how he hadn't done enough for Ran, and now he never could.

He doesn't cry. He definitely doesn't cry from frustration, or fear.

Doesn't remember how small she looked the first time he held her, how she could fit in one hand and a bit of arm, how tiny and red and angry she looked, all of her fingers unable to fit around one of his as she squeezed with one tiny fist.

She had such a strong grip for such a little one. The way she blinked up at him, gave him a smile. The thought he may never see her again—

A hand descends on his shoulder. "We'll get them back," Kudō says, kneeling down next to him.

Kogorō stands up, shrugs his shoulder to get Kudō's damned hand off. He doesn't need his pity. "Whatever. I'm going for a smoke," he says, heading outside to the stairwell even though he smokes inside all of the time. The cool breeze does nothing for him, but he leans against the door and just breathes.

Kudō comes out some time later, hands in his pockets. "I swept the Agency for bugs," he says.

Kogorō just grunts, chewing on an unlit cigarette. Kudō pulls his hand out of his pocket, opening his fist.

The cigarette falls out of his mouth. There's at least a half a dozen small pieces of electronics. "Shouldn't be any out here, though I'd check your personal rooms as well," Kudō says noncommittally. "I wore a jammer, just in case."

Kogorō still doesn't speak as Kudō puts them back in his pocket.

"The reason I dropped by was to give you this," Kudō says, handing something to Kogorō.

It's a mobile phone.

"If she calls, press this button here," he says, tapping the back of it," Kudō says. "It will let me know, and emit a signal that should disable or scramble any new ones."

"'Them?'" Kogorō says. He hates the things, but he pockets it anyway.

"If I know my son, and I'd like to think I do, he wouldn't leave her side unless he was forced to." Kudō says. Then he walks past Kogorō down the stairs.

"Hey Kudō," Kogorō calls out.

"Yes?" he half-turns.

"Thanks," Kogorō says. "And good luck."

Kudō nods. "You too. We'll need it."

* * *

The days start blurring together. Kogorō loses track of time, then starts losing hope.

This is a routine he never wanted. Phone calls, police visits, tips that lead nowhere. He keeps doggedly at it, pushing himself beyond all proper functioning. The apartment above the Agency stands empty and cold; without Ran to fill it, it feels like nothing. There's no point. Evidence she lived (lives?) there is overwhelming.

He stays at the Agency, desk clustered with notes of sightings and beer cans and a thousand cigarette butts, ashtrays full and piled high.

Kogorō can't even muster anger. He just feels empty—like a hollow, vast cavern inside him. Numb. Gone.

Each day he falls further into that pit. He can't sleep. Food tastes like ash.

The days blur until he can no longer tell them apart, phone calls dropping off as people lose interest.

Even Kudō in all his glory has been able to come up with nothing.

The shift between day and night becomes meaningless as insomnia keeps him awake at night, as he catches fitful sleep in catnaps during the day.

The ringing of the phone wakes Kogorō from an uneasy sleep. His neck hurts from a week of sleeping at his desk "Hello?"

"Dad?" A thin weak voice warbles back at him. He would know that voice anywhere. "Ran?!" It sounds small, but that's her. She's alive. His eyes burn. Tears start to well up. She's alive. Ran's alive.

For a long moment, there is nothing but silence. And then—

"Ran? Are you all right? Are you safe? Where are you?" Kogorō asks in a frenzy, tripping over his words in his haste to get them out.

"I'm safe," Ran says, but Kogorō hears a thundercrack loud enough to make him wince, the sound of shattering glass, and the sound of whistling wind.

Kogorō knows that sound. It's a goddamn gunshot.

His heart leaps in his throat. His baby girl isn't out of danger yet. There's the sound of a honking horn and then some squealing tires. Just what the hell is happening? Kogorō's mind races. If he loses her now—

"Was that gunfire? You don't sound safe," Kogorō says, frantic. "I'm coming to get you!" He haphazardly throws his jacket on, grabs his wallet. "Where are you?" He presses the button on the device that Kudō gave him.

"Where are we?" he hears her say away from the phone.

"Shizuoka," he hears a young male voice say faintly, and it sounds like the detective brat.

"Shizuoka. We're in Shizuoka Prefecture, not sure where, heading for the closest hospital."

Kogorō closes his eyes. Hospital. So it's bad enough someone, maybe her, is injured. The wind is still whistling loudly, making it hard to hear.

"What do you mean, 'we?'" he asks, hoping to ascertain who's injured and how badly. Ran sounds awake and coherent, but that could just be adrenaline.

He hears Ran take a breath over the phone. "Um," she says after a long moment. "The people that rescued me, and—" she stops.

"I think you did a fair amount of rescuing on your own, little Miss Ran, " the young man that sounds like the detective brat says with a laugh. Kogorō scowls. He doesn't sound so injured. So it's probably Ran, then.

"Is that upstart detective brat with you?" he grumbles, worried but hiding it. If he overhears Kogorō sounding concerned, he might get ideas.

"Yes, he is," Ran says firmly.

"Ran, why—" he begins, not sure what he wants to ask. _Why were you taken? Why won't you tell me where you are, really? Why have you been gone for so long? Why does your voice sound so high and light and brittle like you're about to break? Why are you still getting shot at?_

Ran actually cuts him off. "He's not doing very well," she says, chiding him. "He's been shot. And they doped him up on something."

Something in his heart eases just a bit. She's not the one gravely injured. He hears worry in her voice. She's always worried over that boy in some shape or the other. But still, they're not out of danger yet, and more than anything, he just wants her here. "What happened?" he asks, hoping to get a straight answer. "Ran, where have you been?" he pleads softly. His baby girl. One of the few lights left in his life. No true father ever wants pain for his daughter, and Kogorō would give anything to take her place, to spare her from the deep pain he hears in her voice. "Why can I hear gunshots?"

Ran takes a deep, rattling breath. "We were kidnapped. They want us back." Kogorō has deduced that much. He wonders why he asked. Maybe some desperate hope that it wasn't as bad as it sounds.

"There was no ransom. I haven't heard anything. You and him just vanished." And that was the hardest part. The not-knowing following by worst-case-scenario thoughts. The cleanliness of the abduction. The complete lack of any clues. The fact that even Kudō with his fancy mansion and supposedly great detective skills couldn't find any trace of them.

Times like this, a man has to look deep inside himself and face up to his flaws, and Kogorō is not enough. He knows he's not on Kudō's level, and it burns. Maybe if he had been a better father, a better detective, he could have found her sooner, spared her this.

"There wouldn't have been." Ran says it so matter-of-factly that Kogorō's heart lurches. She says it just like the Osaka brat. Just like Kudō. Who are these people that took her? "I don't know how much you know, but Shinichi was working on a big case—"

"And he dragged you right into it!" Kogorō says, unable to stop the words from exploding out of his mouth.

"He did what he could to protect me," Ran says, and her voice is noticeably chilly. "He's always done that." Ran says, like it's a reminder, and Kogorō has to concede her point. "And I've been involved since the beginning." The beginning? The beginning of what? Just how long has this been going on? He opens his mouth to ask, but Ran continues.

"Everyone back there needs to be careful, they're all danger. Look, I'll explain—Kyaaa!" Ran squeals, and Kogorō's heart lurches, dropping to the pit of his stomach.

He has no idea what is going on, why the line goes quiet but not dead. He strains to hear anything, anything at all that will tell him whether or not Ran's okay, but all he can hear is the whistling of the wind, then a loud horn and the sound of a screaming engine.

"Ran! Ran! Tell me what's going on!" Kogorō screams into the receiver. No, he can't do anything, sitting on the line, useless, Ran in danger, and Kogorō has never felt so alone, so helpless.

"Ran!" Then he hears someone breathe, but it's quick and forceful. "Ran! Ran! Are you all right?" Let her be okay. Please, let her be okay.

"I'm fine, Dad," Ran says, and then she laughs, the wild kind, the type one gets from the sheer relief of being alive. "We were in a spot of trouble, but we're making it all right now."

She must have escaped whoever was shooting at her. Kogorō closes his eyes as Ran gives him the name of the hospital. "I'll let everyone know to be careful and meet you there."

"Ran, I know I haven't—" and then he stops, unable to finish. _Been a good father to you._ But he tries, and that is what counts, isn't it? _Been there for you when you needed it most_. That much is true.

"Um, Dad. Before you get here, there's ah, something you should know," Ran says, and her voice sounds smaller than usual. Hesitant.

Oh god. What if she's pregnant? She's been alone with a boy for who knows how long, and who knows how she passed the time. He trusts her, but that brat can be persuasive. He's too young to be a granddad! "That detective brat hasn't touched you, has he?" Kogorō demands.

"Of course not! Geez, Dad! But um," Ran says, quiet and bashful. "You may be a little surprised when you see me," she says.

"What do you mean?" he asks because he has no idea what that could even mean. At all. What if she's injured? What if they beat her?

"You'll see when you get here. Just don't freak out, all right?" she says. "And Mom?"

"She's out looking. I'll call her. We'll both meet you there with the police. Look, Ran, be safe."

"You too, Dad. I'm okay," Ran says. "I'll see you soon. Stay safe," she says, "Keep on the move."

"Yeah," he says, but there's no connection. She's hung up on him.

If what she says is true, there's no time.

He presses the button on the receiver cradle to clear the line and is halfway to dialing Eri's number when he gets a call.

"You found them?" Kudō Yuusaku says. The room behind him sounds loud, busy, lots of voices, noises.

"Ran called me," he says.

"Are you sure it was her?" Kudō asks.

"Yeah. Your boy was with her," he says. "He's alive," Kogorō trails off, unsure how to tell him he's hurt.

A rattling intake of breath. "His mobile phone searched for service just long enough for a nearby base station to register the location. I was going to call you to update you, but I wanted to let our people there know first—"

"I understand," Kogorō says, cutting him off. Kudō's rambling, offering excuses. It's not like him, especially when they're to Kogorō. "They were shooting at them while Ran was on the phone with me. Good thing you did."

"Shooting at them?" he says, voice tense.

"Yeah. Ran says...Ran says he was shot." Then Kogorō gives him all the information he gained from Ran, which admittedly isn't much. "Are you going to meet us there?" he asks.

A long silence on the line. "There's a few things I have to take care of first," Kudō says, and Kogorō wonders what could be more important than his own son. "I'm trusting you to take care of him," Kudō continues, and Kogorō wonders what he means by that.

Nevertheless, he says murmurs his assent, and hangs up on him, reaching to call his wife and give her the news.

* * *

Sometimes, Kogorō wishes things could be like they used to.

He and Eri are seated in the waiting room of the hospital, and Kogorō can feel the cold distance between them. She's sitting tall, posture perfect. She wouldn't slump, no, not his Eri. Not even as tired, as stressed as she is. Not in front of him. That would show weakness.

He knows he hasn't been the best father, or the best husband. But he does miss her all the time for all he doesn't want to let her know.

There was a time when he'd have his arm around her, when she'd let him have his arm around her.

That time has long since passed.

They'd arrived together in the dead of night and they wouldn't let them see Ran no matter how much Kogorō raged, no matter how much Eri reasoned with them.

It's been hours. Kogorō is at the end of his rope. They won't tell them anything. That coral-headed inspector has already been in twice.

Assistant Inspector Satō and Detective Takagi are here and in quiet conversation together. Kudō's doing, no doubt. He always was good friends with Chief Inspector Megure, and Kogorō supposes they're a good alternative since he can't be here himself.

He bounces his foot. Why aren't they letting him see her? They've been moved from the critical care ward but they're still being guarded by police officers, and no one is telling him anything. A few minutes pass. Yokomizo walks in again.

That's it. He's not waiting anymore.

He barges in the room, muscling past the officers, calling for his daughter, Eri following shortly behind.

It's not that he doesn't recognize the figures on the bed. It's that he does. Immediately. He knows both of them better than he knows himself. How could he not recognize instantly the daughter he raised, even through the bruises? What kind of father would he be if he didn't?

And because he recognizes his daughter, he recognizes the boy in the bed, just as battered and bruised.

Kudō Shinichi.

His first reaction is not anger, it's shock, and a little bit of hurt that he felt he couldn't tell him about whatever this is. So even as Eri's voice sounds past him, even as his knees threaten to buckle under him, he just stares. Blood rushes through his ears.

The boy is hanging his head, and Kogorō recognizes that as the rare picture of Conan being contrite. But his mind races through Ran's childhood, races through the last half a year, and it matches all too well. Then he thinks back to all the time his daughter has cuddled the boy to her chest, the fact that he was living under their roof, the fact he felt he had to be dishonest towards them, the cryptic words of his blasted father , the fact that her injuries are more than likely Conan's fault, and then the anger comes.

"Dad," Ran says, jumping in front of the detective kid, her arms outspread like she has to protect Conan—no, Shinichi from his anger. "You promised not to freak out," she says, narrowing her eyes at him. She's always had her own mind, just like her mother, even when she was young (well, the first time, anyway) and it's been equal parts endearing and frustrating.

In the face of his daughter, he can do nothing but ask the one question that's no doubt ringing through everyone's mind. "How?" he asks her, and Ran runs to him, and he takes her in his arms, holding her tight, fighting back tears. She's so small like this, and she's painfully thin. Up close, he can see her injuries are worse than he thought, and she clings to him like she never wants to let go. He never wants to let her go again.

A father's duty is to provide and care for his daughter, to guard her from the world until she is ready to face it herself.

And he has failed. Miserably.

With his daughter in his arms and Eri pressed against him for the first time in a long time, Shinichi tells them exactly how.

Every last vivid gory detail.

Including the times that Kogorō himself was almost a casualty. It's not a pretty tale.

And he doesn't have to say it. Kogorō's not a bad detective.

His "other" self.

The blackouts. It HAD been him all along.

So many times it had been Cona—Shinichi succeeding in protecting Ran where Kogoro himself couldn't.

"I knew," Kogorō says. "That time at the television station wasn't a fluke. I knew it," he repeats. He turns, looking at Shinichi. "The cases. It was you all along, wasn't it?"

Shinichi nods. "It was," he admits, his head down, hands in his lap. Like this, it's hard to take him seriously, it's hard to think that this child is that arrogant brat of a teenager. Well, was that arrogant brat of a teenager.

Because he knows him, now. They've lived under the same roof, shared life together as a family. He's protected his daughter like her life is more important than his own, and more than once. They've gone on trips, laughed together, experienced victories and triumphs and defeats, and he's fond of the kid.

Well, maybe only a little bit.

And then something happens; Kogorō has a rare bit of self-awareness, and he thinks about the disparity between them, and he lets it go. There are more important things than his pride on the line now, so he heads over the the kid, who flinches away from him as he raises his hand. That hurts more than he'd care to admit, and he makes an oath not to roughhouse with the kid anymore.

But he claps his hand on his shoulder anyway, giving it a soft squeeze. "Thank you for taking care of my daughter," he says. He doesn't just mean just the abduction, but all the times before as well.

Shinichi shakes his head. "She took care of me," he replies, humble.

* * *

A day or so later, they're sitting on the sofa in the Professor's house as his daughter and Haibara Ai or whoever are talking about fashion. Kogorō isn't really paying attention, zoning out at the first mention of coordinating accessories. But Ran had wanted to make sure the other girl wasn't working herself to death, and Kogorō wasn't about to let her out of his sight. Or Conan. Either one of them, actually.

"...It was because of that Yōko incident, wasn't it?" Shinichi says. Or Conan. He's not really sure what to call him anymore. Detective Brat probably works just fine.

"Eh?" Kogorō.

"The one with Higo? That you didn't want Haibara to be the other one like us," Shinichi says. "You'd established a rapport with her, you felt. That's why you wanted it to be Ayumi."

Kogorō scratches his cheek, then tugs at his moustache, not wanting to admit that the kid is right.

He doesn't have to. One thing about the brat is he always knows. "You're still staying, right?" he asks to deflect him.

"What?" Shinichi blinks up at him through his glasses. Kogorō wonders why he still wears them since they know now.

"With us?" he elaborates. "After?"

"Oh. I mean, I don't know—"

"We've got that trip to Kanazawa with that client. You can still come. If you want. And I'm sure Ran would want you to stay with us until you got used to being yourself again."

"I don't know," the kid says, kicking his feet.

"Ran would like it," Kogorō repeats.

"Ran would like it?" he repeats, sounding a little confused. Then he looks up at Kogorō who is **not** waiting impatiently for his answer. "Oh! Okay, right, yeah. I'll go."

"And you'll still stay with us right?" Kogorō asks.

"Because Ran would want me to," he says slowly, tilting his head to look at Kogorō.

"Yeah."

"Well, I guess I don't want to disappoint her."

"Yeah. I'd never hear the end of it, otherwise," Kogorō says.

"Yeah."

A long awkward silence.

"I'm gonna go smoke," Kogorō says to break it, then he gets up before the kid can answer, pulls out a cigarette and heads outside, passing Agasa and Eri who are poring over some documents.

He lights up, leans against the side of the house, and _breathes_.


End file.
